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RAMBLES 



BY 



PATEICIUS WALKEE 



v. \\>^s^ 







QUEEX'S BOWER. 

LONDON : 
LONGMANS, GEE EN, AND CO. 

1873. 



All rights reserved. 



TO 

ME, & MES. W. H. FOEBES 

(IN RECOLLECTION OF A PILGRIMAGE TO ' THE TABARD ' ) 

AND OTHER AMERICAN FRIENDS, 

TO WHOM THESE SKETCHES OF THE OLD COUNTRY WILL PERHAPS BE 
MORE INTERESTING THAN TO PEOPLE ON THIS SIDE THE ATLANTIC, 

THE RAMBLER 

RESPECTFULLY AND CORDIALLY 
VENTURES TO INSCRIBE THIS LITTLE BOOK. 

London : December 1872. 



PEEFACE. 



These little Sketches (first printed, or the substance 
of them, in Fraser's Magazine) are, as the title ex- 
presses, of a rambling kind ; yet, though discursive, 
not disconnected, if the thread of the writer's individu- 
ality can be traced running through them. The basis 
is topographical, — Mr. Walker being fond of seeing 
new places, both as delightful and refreshing, many of 
them, to the eye and spirit, and chiefly as giving food 
for meditation, to which he seems to have a somewhat 
Jacques-like tendency ; he has noted down some of the 
pictures and associations that passed through his mind, 
for his own pleasure, and, if perchance he can find any 
sympathetic readers, for theirs. He does not carry 
them to Japan or Central Africa, but to nooks and 
corners close at hand, towns of familiar names, old 
villages, country landscapes, and bits of coast. No 
one need read the book through, and any chapter will 
do for chapter first. This reader may like to be re- 
minded of the New Forest — that, of Canterbury 
Cathedral, or of Clovelly. Someone intending to fish 
or tour in the Green Island next vacation, may have 



viii PREFACE. 

an appetite for the salmon-fishery, and the flavours of 
Irish history and character, in chapters five and six ; 
and people who desire a familiar notion or reminder of a 
meeting of the British Association, scientifically and 
socially, may find something to help them in chapters 
seven and eleven. Those who do not care for a portrait 
of Cobbett, may look at one of the less known William 
Gilpin, or of the poets Herrick and Herbert. There is 
a good deal of talk and criticism on poetry up and down 
the pages, and the Rambler has evidently a leaning that 
way ; as well as a great objection to the demolishers 
and defacers of beautiful old buildings. Science, and 
its relations to religion, are discussed; and many 
features of modern life and thought glanced at. 

For the rest, the little book is very slight, very im- 
perfect, very sincere; and the Rambler will think 
himself extremely lucky if it be found readable, and 
here and there suggestive. He has taken no pains 
either to please or avoid displeasing anyone, but trusts 
he will nowhere be found to give unreasonable offence 
to any frank or gentle mind; and that those sensitive 
folk, the Kelts, will not be exasperated at having their 
collective name, from the Greek, spelt with a K, espe- 
cially as they use no C, great or small, in their own 
languages. 

Should this volume be fortunate, a second series is 
intended to follow soon. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER L 

IN THE NEW FOREST. 

PAGE 
Fox-hunting — William the Conqueror — Brockenhurst Church. — 
Swineherds — Mark Ash — Gilpin's Forest Scenery — Oaks — 
Queen's Bower — Insect Life— Science and Imagination — Birds 
and Squirrels . . . . . .1 

CHAPTER II. 

STILL IN THE FOREST. 

Gypsies — Foresters — The local Dialect — Rev. "William Gilpin — 
Three notable Trees — Boldre Churchyard — Lyndhurst — ■ 
Flowers, Plaats, and Animals — Forest Frontiers — Christchurch 21 

CHAPTER III. 

AT WINCHESTER. 

St. Giles's Hill— College— Cathedral— Destruction of Old Things 
— St. Swithin — Keats — Rev. Thomas Warton — Culture . 48 



CHAPTER IV. 

AT FARNHAM. 

High Street — Bishop's Palace — 'The Jolly Farmer' — Sketch of 
William Cobbett's Life and Writings — His Grave — Crooksbury 
Hill ....... 62 



x CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

rs 
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. » 

PAGE 

Well of the Calf — Upper Lough — Irish Peers— Annals of Ulster 
— Enniskillen — Devenish — Lower Lough — fully Castle — Bel- 
leek — The Cataract of Asaroe . . . . .95 

CHAPTER VI. 

AT BALLYSHANNON. 

Place and People— The Waterfall— King Hugh— The Salmon- 
Pishery — Angling — Legend of Parthalon — Abbey of Asaroe — 
The Harbour . . . .. . . . 118 

CHAPTER VII. 

AT EXETER, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

The City and Cathedral — Public Statues, &c. — Surrounding 
Landscape — The ' Philosophers ' — Scientific Truth and Spiritual 
Truth ......... 141 

CHAPTER VIII. 

AT TORQUAY, AND ELSEWHERE. 

Torquay — Modern Builders — Babbicombe — Kent's Cavern — 
Entozoa — Modern Science — On Dartmoor — Totnes — The 
Gharm of Old Houses . . . . . .158 

CHAPTER IX. 

TO DEAN PRIOR. 

Devonshire Lanes— Herrick's Poetry — Dean Prior-^Sketch of the 
Poet's Life— Herrick and Martial . . . 173 

CHAPTER X. 

AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

Exeter again — A Cathedral Service — Bideford — Westward Ho I — 
Bathing — Ebenezer Jones — Clovelly . . . .191 



CONTENTS. xi 

CHAPTER XL 

AT LIVERPOOL, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

PAGK 

The Mersey — Irishism — Americanism — The Docks — Commerce 
and Credit — The British Association — Mr. Huxley on- Vital 
Grerms — Mr. Tyndall on Scientific Imagination — Physical and 
Moral Philosophy — Science and Eeligion — Liverpool Architec- 
ture — Corn Stores — An Emigrant Ship — Poor Streets — Birken- 
head Park— In the Train ..... 206 

CHAPTER XII. 

UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

Wimborne — River Stour — Blandford — Sam Cowell — Popular 
Songs — Sturminster Newton — Barnes's Poems — The Dorset 
Dialect— The Peasantry . . . . .246 

CHAPTER XIII. 

AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

Salisbury — Old Sarum — Stonehenge — Wilton House — Bemerton — 
George Herbert's Life and Poems — His Brother, Lord Herbert 269 

CHAPTER XIV. 

AT CANTERBURY. 

St. Mary Overies — Tomb of Grower — The Tabard — Chaucer and 
the Pilgrims — Sketch of Chaucer's Life — Canterbury — Outside 
the Cathedral — Erasmus — Modern Statues — Augustine — Satur- 
day Night — Inside the Cathedral— Harbledown — The Nightin- 
gale — New Spring and Old Poetry — The Martyrs' Pield — 
Charles the First— The River-side . . . .301 



RAMBLES 

BY 

PATEICIUS WALKER. 

CHAPTER I. 

IN THE NEW FOREST. 

Fox-hunting — William the Conqueror — Brockenhurst Church— Swine- 
herds — Mark Ash — Gilpin's Forest Scenery — Oaks — Queen's Bower — 
Insect Life — Science and Imagination — Birds and Squirrels. 

A meet of foxhounds in the New Forest on a fine 
open winter morning is a pretty enough sight, even to 
one who is no sportsman. 

On some lawn or rising ground, encircled by 
far-spreading russet or leafless woods, you see the 
mounted groups of red-coated gentlemen, with a 
sprinkling of ladies, graceful in flowing dark skirts; 
lively boys on their ponies, and pretty little long- 
haired girls ; black or brown-coated riders too, lawyer 
or doctor, tradesman or farmer ; whosoever, in short, 
chooses to come on the outside of a horse to share in 
this peculiar aristo-democratic amusement. 

B 



2 IN THE NEW IOREST. 

The little old whipper-in (we have no huntsman), 
with ruddy face and lively eyes, sitting his big horse 
as though he lived there, and in fact the most and best 
of his life is in the saddle, calls now and again or 
cracks his whip at the hounds if restless ; but usually 
they are standing about, or stretched on the sward, or 
nosing and questing quietly round within a small area. 

The master bides somewhat aloof, the cares of sove- 
reignty visible on his brow; now and a^ain doffing 
his hat to a fair equestrian, or exchanging a grave 
word with some personage of importance. Carriages 
drive up on the road, and gentlemen go over to greet 
their friends. Other spectators there are, but not 
many; by no means like the enthusiastic crowd of 
miscellaneous pedestrians that come out to see the 
hounds in Ireland, and often follow them, too, for the 
best part of the day : here are only a few foresters 
and boys, smock-frocked, apathetic, and perhaps half 
a dozen young women and children from the nearest 
cottages. 

Now we move to the cover ; in go the hounds, i fea- 
thering ' (waving their feathery tails) among the gorse 
and rusty bracken. ( Ho, Rallywood ! — ho Trojan ! ' — 
a hound gives tongue — f challenges.' — ' There goes Dia- 
mond — hark to Diamond ! ' Forty canine voices make 
the wood resound : reynard darts across one of the 
forest rides — e Tally-ho-o ! ' — he bursts into the open, 
the whole pack at his heels, and away we go. But 'tis 
not mine to attempt the description of f a run ; ' it has 



HUNTING. 3 

"been clone a thousand tinies, and done well. The New 
Forest is a good place for f seeing the hounds work,' as 
they stream together over the open moorlands, or come 
to a check in some gorse-brake or plantation. The 
riding is the easiest possible, no jumping of any sort 
unless you like : much of the ground is open moor 
(you have very seldom to go over crop), and through 
the woods run numerous grassy avenues, called i rides/ 
where you may gallop as on a lawn. Two things a 
stranger has to guard against — getting into a swamp 
and losing his way : let him turn and twist about a 
little, and then find himself all alone among the trees 
and underwood, at some point where three or more 
forest ways diverge, and it may prove no easy matter to 
choose aright. As to the swamps, if you are so am- 
bitious as to keep well forward without knowing the 
ground, you may be galloping along comfortably this 
moment, and the next floundering in a treacherous 
muddy abyss, firm to the inexperienced eye. You 
plunge from your saddle; alas for the shining white 
breeches ! but all is a trifle if you can safely land your 
struggling and frightened horse, without recourse to 
spades and ropes. These swamps, clogging and chilling 
the legs of the hounds with wet mud, are the cause, 
as some think, of that lameness to which the Forest 
hounds are peculiarly liable. Others attribute it to 
the prickles of the abundant dwarf furze ( Ulex nanus). 
The winter in this region is commonly so mild and 
open, that the sport often goes on when frozen-up 

B 2 



4 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

elsewhere, so it is naturally a favourite habitat of 
hunting men. 

A French lady detested war f because it spoiled 
conversation ' — people could talk of nothing else. If 
you are fond of hunting-talk after dinner, you can 
enjoy plenty of it in society here ; and there might 
be worse — it smacks of open air and living nature; 
but to a stranger, who is not an enthusiastic sportsman, 
a little of it suffices. He knows nothing of such a 
gentleman's bay mare, or of Captain So-and-so's 
* brother to Rattler ; ' the copses, gorses, farms, roads, 
spinneys, hills, bottoms, brooks, enclosures, &c, are 
mere names, not in his mind's geography. 

The Conqueror and his sons were mighty hunters — 
not of fox and hare ; but the oft-told tale of the de- 
struction of many villages, churches, and houses in 
making this Xew Forest, is like so much other ( His- 
tory.' Mr. Pope too, with better rhyme than reason, 
:says in his ( Windsor Forest ' (but speaking of this) — 

Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, 
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man : 
Our haughty Norman boasts that barb'rous name, 
And makes his trembling slaves the royal game. 
The fields are ravish'd from the industrious swains, 
From men their cities and from gods their fanes ; 
The levell'd towns with weeds lie covered o'er ; 
And hollow winds through naked temples roar ; 
Round broken columns clasping ivy twined ; 
O'er heaps of ruin stalks the stately hind. 

The poor chalk-gravel soil of the district (Middle 



DOOMSDAY BOOK. 5 

Eocene of the geologists), could never have supported 
many inhabitants. Ytene ( i Furzy ' — f the Furze-land' ?) 
was clearly a wild, moory, woody district in William's 
day, with a small scattered population. He made it 
a Royal Forest, and increased the severity of the old 
forest laws of the Danish and Saxon kings. The inha- 
bitants naturally disliked the afForestment, and stories 
of the new king's inhumanity were told and retold, 
gaining in bulk and definition as the facts retired into 
the past, till the First William became in monkish 
chronicles (subsequent, not contemporary : there is 
nothing of it in the Saxon chronicle) a royal Dragon of 
Wantley — houses and churches were to him geese and 
turkeys. He destroyed i twenty-two ' — f thirty-six ' — 
c fifty -two parish churches,' and when his two sons in 
succession lost their lives in this wicked New Forest, 
it was clearly by vengeance of Heaven. 

Of the buildings named in the Norman Great Roll, 
which the Saxons called e Doom-Book ' (Judgment- 
Book), and sometimes, to express their fears, ' Dooms- 
day Book ' (a title absurdly kept up, and officialised), 
two kinds are commonly found to this day, whether the 
same walls or not, in the places indicated — churches 
and mills. 

Here at Brockenhurst (is it e Badger-wood,' or 
( Brook-wood,' or 'Broken- wood'?) is one of the Doom- 
Book churches. Looking southward from the railway 
platform you may see its weathercock just clearing 
the tree-tops of a wooded hill, and five minutes' walk 



6 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

will bring you to the circular graveyard surrounded 
by shady roads., with its elephantine oak-bole, 

A care 
Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray, 

and the stately pillared yew-tree, iron-red, whose dark 
boughs almost brush the spire. Both these trees, 
very likely, were here when the Norman commissioners 
wrote in their list, e Aluric tenet in Broceste imam 
hidam . . . Ibi ecclesia. Silva de 20 porcis. Tempore 
Regis Edwardi valebat 40 solidos, et post et modo 
4 libras.' l Their spelling of the names of places, by- 
the-bye, gives little guidance; they knew the views 
of Rex Willelmus to be practical, not antiquarian : yet 
the antiquarian facts now are of the greater interest. 
The southern portal, with some other parts of the 
church, also its font, appear to be of the original 
Saxon building, some 800 years old or more. 

Build not, good squire, worthy parishioners, a new 
church, high or low ! repair the old with loving care and 
reverent anxiety : there is a charm, there is a value 
inexpressibly precious in ancientness and continuity cf 
remembrance. The world is poorer and smaller by the 
loss of any old thing visibly connecting us, poor fleet- 
ing mortals, with the sacred bygone years ; leaving a 
door open, as it were, into the Land of the Past. 
Build us not in, beseech you, on that side, enjail not 
our imagination (which is no foolish or trivial part of 
us) with new Lymington bricks, or even from the 
1 Domesday Boole, Hampshire, Ordnance Survey Office. 



RELICS OF THE PAST. 7 

fresh cut quarries of Portland or Caen. Is every 
town and village in England to be made like a Mel- 
bourne, a Farragutville, a Cubittopolis ? It is deeper 
than a question of taste, this of blotting out traces of the 
great Past from our visible world, blotting them out 
for ever, with all their softened beauty, and mystery, 
and tender sadness. 

The worst thing is to erase the venerable relic 
from the earth. The next worst thing (often almost 
as bad as the first) is to ' restore ' it. Sometimes, as 
here, we are told that though a new edifice is neces- 
sary (a statement more readily made than proved) the 
old building is not to be pulled down. But who ever 
saw a forsaken edifice of the humbler sort that did not 
quickly fall into neglect ? Besides, the mystic charm 
of an ancient thing in use is enhanced a thousandfold. 
What interest have antiquities in the glass cases of 
museums, compared with those that meet you in daily 
life, in streets or rural landscapes ? Keep, Old Eng- 
land, thy old churches (albeit old forms of worship 
have changed, and will change), and old manor-houses 
too, and town-halls, and ivied walls, and shady winding 
roads ; these things, believe it, tend to nourish all that 
is wholesome and beautiful in conservatism, and to 
foster a love of the country of our ancestors, which 
is also our own, and will, we hope, be our children's. 

From the churchyard, through a veil of boughs, you 
look down the slope of Brockenhurst Park, and away 



8 J3 T THE NEW FOFEST. 

to a wide semicirque of woods, sweeping round the 
northern horizon from east to west. 'Within the forty 
miles' circuit of the Forest is many an open heath, many 
a thick wood of oak and beech, many a green avenue 
and shadowy glade. Main roads, smooth as in a park, 
run through it to Southampton, to Lymington, to 
Christchurch, to Sarum — for this ancient name holds 
its place on the milestones and fingerposts. In most 
parts you may turn off where you will, without fence 
or other hindrance, into heath or hurst. There are 
many new plantations of oaks, with alternate fir-trees 
to nurse them ; but through these also, lifting the 
gate-latch, you may pass unchallenged. This wild 
liberty is the great charm of the region. No longer 
under fierce forest-law are you liable to be seized for 
wandering in the King's Forest, perhaps to undergo 
ordeal of fire to prove your innocence of poaching, 
perhaps to lose your eyes on the charge of slaying 
venison or wild boar. You may wander for hours and 
meet no one but a chance woodman or earth-stopper, 
or a swineherd in acorn-time ; or, more rarely still, a 
truffle-seeker with his little doo;s. 

The foresters' have an old privilege of turning their 
swine into the forest for six weeks in autumn. One 
man undertakes the care of a herd of several hundred 
hogs. Having fixed on a sleeping place, at first he 
feeds them a few times and teaches them to attend his 
horn. Signor Gryll, though shy and reserved, is not 
stupid, and knows what is good for him. On the second 



THE SWINEHERD. 9 

or third evening, when the horn sounds through long 
glades and tangled underwood, gilded perhaps with last 
sunlight, the hogs come trotting into the rendezvous by 
twos and threes, by dozens and scores, and soon lie 
stretched heads and tails, acorn-glutted, under dim 
forest boughs, only a grunt heard now and again, not 
unlike the human snore ; while, in little wigwam close 
by, snores humanly their temporary lord and master, 
his magic horn by his side. Such a group as this, by 
sunset or moonlight, may the autumnal forest-wanderer, 
musing haply of dryads and hamadryads, of fairies and 
wood-sprites, chance upon under a spreading oak. 

The oaks of the New Forest (chiefly Quercus robur), 
slow-growing on a gravelly soil, are not lofty nor thick- 
leaved ; they are gnarly and close-grained, with boughs 
much twisted and writhen. But here and there rises a 
kingly tree, like that of Knightwood, a huge straight 
lofty bole, with mighty spreading branches, each a tree 
in bulk. Some three miles or so from Lyndhurst, near 
the road to Christchurch, stands this Knightwood Oak, 
and may stand for many a century to come, for it is 
like a powerful man in the full vigour of his life. 1 

Hot was the summer day, and shoulder deep the 
eagle-fern that clothed hill and hollow, and muffled up 
all paths, when my friend and I pushed through from 
Knightwood to Mark Ash, the greatest beechen shade 
in the forest. Huge and weird are its brindled beech- 
trees. Underneath, dim at noonday, our feet rustled 

* On an after visit I think I observed a main limb to be decaying. 



10 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

in the withered relics of a former summer : we paused, 
and the lonely wood was silent. The mighty growths 
stood well apart, each trunk rising into many great 
stems that lifted high overhead their canopy of inter- 
woven green. Amid this company of vast and ancient 
trees, arrived at through a labyrinth of tangled wood- 
land, we seemed to be at the core of some boundless 
primaeval forest. The sunlight striking through its 
lofty branches on the floor of brown fallen leaves could 
not enliven it. There was something ominous and 
awful in the place. One half-expected at every turn 
to encounter some unexampled sight. Even the hogs, 
if they came hither, could scarcely disenchant it — 
would seem to be of the crew of Comus, or his mother 
Circe. 

The name i Mark Ash,' like Bound Oak (Boundary 
Oak), indicates some special tree once used for a mark. 
We saw no ash in this beech wood, and ash-trees in the 
forest are very few. 

Mr. Gilpin, in his e Forest Scenery,' is hard upon 
the beech — calls it an f unpleasing ' tree, Q an object of 
disapprobation.' l To the worthy vicar of Boldre be- 
longs the merit of having loved and sought after land- 
scape beauty at a time when few had any eyes for it ; 
but he always criticised nature with reference to his 
own little drawings in brown ink, and to what could be 
agreeably expressed by such means. A quality called 

1 Vol. i. p. 46. 



GILPIN'S 'FOREST SCENERY: 11 

Picturesqueness, defined according to certain limita- 
tions of his own, was what he looked for, and found or 
missed in every visible object or scene. The horse- 
chestnut is ( a heavy disagreeable tree,' — f the whole 
tree together in flower is a glaring object, totally in- 
harmonious and unpicturesque.' ] He is severe on the 
willows — ( the weeping willow is the only one of its 
tribe that is beautiful.' 2 The cedar is interesting, the 
more so on account of e the respectable mention which 
is everywhere made of it in Scripture ; ' 3 but the haw- 
thorn ' has little claim to picturesque beauty,' 4 nay, it 
is c sometimes offensive ; ' 5 while the poor bramble 
(whose sweeping curves tufted with leaf-sprouts, ap- 
pear to some eyes the perfection of elegance) is de- 
nounced as c the most insignificant of all vegetable 
reptiles.' But all this is natural enough in one who 
looked up to Horace Walpole and Reverend Mr. 
Mason as his arbiters of taste ; it is on a level with 
the former's gothic architecture, and the latter's poetry 
■ — poetry which the writer of it so honestly believed to 
be immortal. Yet I am giving a false impression of 
Gilpin by thus putting foremost his absurdities. His 
little books on scenery may still be looked into with 
interest, for his love of nature was genuine ; he ex- 
presses himself in pure and accurate language of its 
kind, and the brown sketches are often clever and 
pleasing. I observe that Henry Thoreau, of Massa- 

1 Gilpin's Forest Scenery, vol. i. p. 61. 2 Ibid. p. 68. 

3 Ibid. p. 72. * Ibid. p. 99. 5 Ibid. p. 219. 



12 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

chusetts, whose notes upon nature in his own region 
are so fresh and vivid (see i Life in the Woods/ and 
' A Week on the Merrimac,' reader, and you will not 
repent it), took much interest in old Mr. Gilpin's 
writings and sketches. 

In pictures queue ss Gilpin ranks the oak highest, and 
here, no doubt, most will agree with him. That is 
to say, the oak in maturity and in old age ; as a strip- 
ling (like many things that advance slowly to their 
perfection) it is ungainly. JSfot far from the stalwart 
Knightwood Oak, stand his famous elder brethren, 
named ( The Twelve Apostles,' reckoned to be the 
oldest trees in the forest. Their situation is not im- 
pressive ; they grow scattered about a space of flat 
open ground, cultivated as a farm. Their heads are 
gone ; they are shattered stumps, though still alive ; 
forlorn and decayed giants. The new crop of winter 
wheat springs green round one, whose gnarly roots 
clutch the soil as with monstrous claws ; the farmer's 
cows scratch their sides against the rhinoceros-like 
bark of another; this one is a hollow tower; that a 
pillar of ivy. The handsomest oak in the New Forest, 
they say, is one that I have not yet seen, near its 
western boundary, at Moyle's Court. 

That which as yet holds first place in my regard 

stands in the beautiful wood with a beautiful name — 

Queen's Bower ' — stretching downward one great arm 

across the clear brook (a rare and precious thing in the 

Forest), that plays over gravel, and ( winds about and 



Q VEEN'S BOWER. 13 

in and out ' among alder and hazel. This oak, though 
not hollow, is evidently very aged. Its short bole, 
massive as the pillar of some rock temple, is tinted with 
delicate gray lichens and embroidered with creeping 
lines of ivy. Tufts of polypody flourish in the ample 
space whence the heavy branches diverge all at once 
• — an enviable reclining place, but not so easy to mount 
to as you may think it. Profane not the lichened and 
ivied bark by such an attempt, but lie down on the 
sward, under these wide-stretching twisted boughs, 
with the brook at your feet, and watch, if day and 
season allow, the trembling sunlights and cool trans- 
lucent shadows, the dancing parties of whirligig-beetles 
( Gyrinus natator), the troops of i water-measurers ' 
(Ilydrometrd) jerking themselves on the glassy surface, 
the little fish coming and vanishing, the jewelly dragon- 
flies, some azure-bodied, some green, darting up and 
down the streamlet's course — veritable flying dragons 
to the insects which they seize and devour. It is c the 
Struggle for Life.' One will sometimes even pounce 
on a passing butterfly, carry it to some twig, tear off 
its wings and gobble up its body in a minute. These 
fair ferocious creatures, blue or emerald, borne on 
wings of violet gauze or silver netted with black, the 
French (is it partly satiric or moral ?) name demoiselles ; 
and our own poets have sometimes called them f damsel 
flies.' 

The abundance of insect life in the Forest in summer- 
time, interesting as it is, proves now and again incon- 



14 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

venient : clouds of gnats in the air., armies of ants and 
ticks in the grass, corsair wasps and hornets, gadflies 
as bis: as humble-bees, crawling ' forest flies ' to set vour 
horse wild — of these there are enough and to spare. 
The special ( forest fly ' (Hippobosca) is of a dirty 
reddish colour, about as big as a middle-sized house- 
fly, very abundant, hard to hit, and, even when hit, 
hard to kill. They are said to prefer white and gray 
horses, and swarm on them by hundreds. They bite, 
but that is not the worst; they crawl — equally, it is 
said, forward, backward, or sideways — and tickle as 
they crawl. Olive oil defeats them when it can be ap- 
plied. A strange horse coming to Lyndhurst races 
will probably have some of his running taken out of 
him by the fret caused by these troublesome natives. 
Horses bred in the Forest don't seem to mind them ; 
and you will see many a herd of forest ponies, many a- 
grave mare and frisking foal on the wood-lawns, feeding 
and moving about as comfortably, to all appearance, as 
if they had never heard of a Hippohosca or an GEstrus- 
eqiri. The horse-gadfly lays her eggs on the horse's- 
hairs, loithin reach of his tongue ; he licks off the sticky 
stuff and swallows it ; out come the grubs, and fasten 
and feed on the coat of his stomach till they are an 
inch long, and of an age to drop off and be carried 
abroad ; falling on the ground, they burrow awhile, 
then rise into the air as gadflies, continue their species^ 
and die. The sheep gadfly punctures the sheep's nos- 
tril and lays her eggs there. The worms creep up into 



INSECTS. 15 

the cavities of the skull, and feed, descending in due 
time for a short open-air life. While these creatures 
are crawling up or clown its nostrils, the sheep jumps 
about and sneezes violently. The cow-gadfly is the 
big bee-like one ; it lays its eggs under the skin, 
making a puncture which sends the cow galloping with 
tail up. "While a cow is thus disturbed by the pricking 
of her hide, it is remarkable that a number of large 
grubs feeding on the inside surface of a horse's stomach 
don't appear to do him the least harm or annoyance in 
the ordinary course. When they go astray, in their 
fleshy pasturage, fasten in a wrong place, then they do 
harm, and may give their host the c bots.' Possibly 
the human entozoa are countless, and only do harm in 
exceptional cases — when they go astray. 

Is not the multiplicity and variety of animal life as 
astounding to think of as the starry universe overhead? 
Yet we ought not to be overpowered; for, surely 
man's mind is incomparably greater and more wonder- 
ful than all the phenomena of which it takes cognisance. 
And to this mind — soul — intelligent self — does Science 
(great and valuable as it is) add any power essentially 
new, for penetrating into the nature of things ? Science 
widens and clears the prospect of the phenomenal 
world, proving or disproving guesses, rectifying mis- 
takes, accumulating, classifying, generalising, simplify- 
ing knowledge. As to the principles of Nature (so to 
speak), it seems to me they rest, and will rest, for ever 
inscrutable to man in this world ; but that a sound and 



16 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

vigorous imagination catches deeper glimpses, sees, in 
good moments, further and truer, than the reasoning 
faculty can through microscope and telescope. I love 
books of natural science, and their boldness now-a-days, 
but when they venture to proclaim, even speculatively, 
anything like a final generalisation of phenomena, that 
seems far too daring. ( Be bold, be bold, be not too 
bold.' Books of science written in support of a special 
conjecture have, when ably done, a force and clearness 
of their own, and bring many memorable facts into 
order ; but when, after supplying their contributions of 
less or more to the sum of knowledge, they make a 
sweep over some great region and catch all the stars of 
the heavens in the net of their theory, or all the organic 
creatures of the earth, my gratitude turns to vexation : 
6 Quietly,' I would fain say ; e you are going much too 
fast and too far : a profound and awful reverence be- 
comes us, if we at all venture our thoughts over these 
boundaries.' I am charmed to hear from Mr. Darwin 
how the cottagers' cats promote the growth of red 
clover and wild pansies. These plants have long-tubed 
corollce, and the humble-bee, while seeking their nectar, 
carries-in the pollen for their fructification on his long 
pucker; field-mice destroy the nests of the humble- 
bees , cats eat the field-mice ; and so the humble-bees 
multiply, and fertilise the flowers. Also I listen with 
delight when he argues on the larger topic of the 
Geological Record, and how fragmentary are its 
remains ; but I confess to feeling timid and uneasy 



LIMITS OF SCIENCE. 17 

(my scientific friend B. laughs with mild contempt) 
when our naturalist announces the view to which 
argument and analogy conduct him, namely, that e all 
the organic beings ' — plants and animals together, in- 
eluding man — ( which have ever lived upon this earth 
may have descended from one primordial form.' * In all, 
as far as at present known, the germinal vesicle is the 
same. So that every being starts from a common 
origin.' l Not alone does our imagination revolt, but 
our logical understanding at once detects the base- 
lessness of the positive assertion — e So that every being 
starts from a common origin,' in which that important 
qualifying clause in the previous sentence — e as far as at 
present linown ' — is left out of sight. tf Germinal vesicle ' 
— i simple cell ' — Gracious heavens ! what is ' at present 
known ' of this human life, this human spirit of ours ? 
Again, is there any life in the stars ? An unan- 
swerable question, whatever we may surmise. An 
able and learned man writes his book on the nega- 
tive side : without committing himself, he does all 
he can against the affirmative, and puts before us 
on the way many wonderful views. The logical un- 
derstanding, working unbiassed and not in defence or 
attack of any theory, can, I venture to assert, find 
many a flaw in the great Professor's reasoning ; but in 
advance of the process, with lightning flash indeed, the 
faculty of imagination (if it be not rather the sum 
and flower of the faculties) gives its high verdict. 



1 Origin cf Spates, 3rd ed. p. 519. 
C 



13 IN THE NEW FOREST. 

Remove yourself from the earth's surface to another 
station in space. Countless suns and planets — bright- 
scattered, bright-clustered — revolve around you. You 
are able, let us say, to single out yonder shining dot 
among the multitude, larger than some, smaller than 
others, and to know it as your old home — what you 
called Earth. You know it to be inhabited by a mul- 
titude of living creatures. All the other shining dots 
that you see, whirling globes, millions of vast orbs, all 
of these are travelling waste and empty in their mighty 
courses. They are but as huge balls of fog. 

Nay, you do not believe this ; the thought could not 
in any way gain a moment's lodgment in your mind. 
And here, observe, imagination presents nothing fan- 
tastic, but is resting on a strictly scientific basis. 
Imagination, looking abroad from the pinnacles of 
science, can alone give any true glimpse of the secrets 
of even the physical universe. Healthy imagination, 
moreover, is moral and religious, and its insight goes 
infinitely deeper than all physical knowledge. In 
brief, it is well that science, using her utmost care 
of investigation and subtlety of insight, should reve- 
rently acknowledge her existing limits, and be chary 
of theorising beyond them. 

But let us change into an easier key, for our own 
part, and enjoy the hour and scene — i fleet the time as 
in the golden age.' Here, on a summer's day, under 
the Oak of Queen's Bower, its cool brook running by, 
the sunshine tempered with curtains of foliage, is the 



SQUIRRELS. 19 

place to read ' As you like it : ' see the little finger-long 
volume. In Mark Ash the shade of melancholy 
boughs was too real and oppressive. There are no ants 
or ticks in this close sward ; the merry wild bees hum 
past on their errands ; from afar comes the soft voice 
of the cuckoo. And now let us rise and wander 
through the close beeches of Liney Hill and the grace- 
ful glades and lawns of Whitley Wood. Perhaps that 
sluggish hawk, the honey-buzzard, may be seen slowly 
skimming round ; he rifles the nest of the wild bee in 
some hollow bole or high fork, not eating the honey 
but the bee-grubs. The human forester, when he can 
find it, takes the honey for his share. Here are fir- 
trees; at a dropping cone I look up and see the 
squirrel that has thus betrayed himself, climbing from 
branch to branch, and keeping as much as he can on 
the further side of his tree, but the bushy tail (his 
helm in leaping) is not easily hid. When unalarmed 
he ascends his tree in spirals, by an easy inclined- 
plane ; if pressed, he jumps rapidly from tree to tree, 
uttering a creaking little cry of fright. That loosish 
bundle of sticks in the larch-top is one of the nests or 
c cages.' The Forest-boy often wears a squirrel-skin 
cap, with the tail set as feather ; and about Christmas- 
time these rough young sylvans go squirrel-hunting 
with i squoyles J — short sticks knobbed with lead — 
and knock down scores of the bright-eyed little red 
creatures. Verily, man is the fiercest of animals ; he 
spares nothing. The gypsies bake the squirrel whole 

c 2 



20 % IN THE NEW FOREST. 

in a ball of clay among their wood embers, and do the 
hedgehog same fashion, a way of cooking common to 
wild ^-housekeepers in various parts of the world, and 
said to give a better result (keeping in the juices and 
flavour) than all the elaborate processes of Ude and 
Soyer. The fallow-deer of the Forest were killed off, 
save a few stragglers, some twelve years ago, to the 
advantage of the young oaks, and of the hollies too, 
which now grow tali and strong and enrich the woods 
in winter. 




tj=<^a»». 



21 



CHAPTER II. 

STILL IN THE FOREST. 

Gypsies — Foresters — The Local Dialect — Eev. William Gilpin — Tlire 
notable Trees — Boldre Churchyard— Lyndhurst — Flowers, Plants, 
and Animals — Forest Frontiers — Christchurch. 

There are yet some Gypsies, or e Egyptians,' as old 
Acts of Parliament call them, in the Forest ; for the most 
part, of the tribes calling themselves e Lee ' and 
' Stanley.' When I say e in the Forest,' I mean tra- 
versing and flitting about the district, and camping 
therein oftener than elsewhere. You may suddenly 
light, even in the depth of winter, on their squalid 
encampment on some sheltered piece of sward, or 
anions; the o'orse and underwood on the fringe of a 
common ; low, savage-like tents, mere cross-sticks and 
patchwork ; with a population no less uncouth — weird 
old women, naked children, young women, boys and 
men, brown-faced, black-eyed, black-haired, dirty; 
not fierce but wild-looking, like untamed animals as 
they are ; their attire, however old, brightened with 
some gaudy-coloured kerchief. With the tents is 
probably found a covered cart like a Cheap Jack's ; 
three or four asses and a rough pony or two tethered 



22 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

close by ; while a wood fire, with a large pot slung 
over it, sends up its blue fume. 

At first glance, these people much resemble those 
dark-complexioned natives of the West and South 
of Ireland who are said to be of part Spanish breed ; 
more closely viewed, they have often, I think, a 
strikingly Hindoo appearance, carried safe across the 
four centuries or so since they started westward from 
upper India, urged perhaps by famine or war, and 
became a wandering tribe. It seems likely that 
towards the confines of Asia and Europe they split 
into at least two streams of vagabondage, the northern 
one creeping into South Russia, Bohemia, and so 
westward ; the southern stream making its way to 
Egypt and on into Spain. In Bohemia and Egypt 
they first came particularly under the notice of Westerns, 
— were probably numerous there ; hence the terms 
( Bohemian ' and ' Egyptian ' or e Gypsy,' applied to 
them in ignorance of their real history. A learned 
indefatigable Teuton, Dr. Pott, has packed into his 
thick volume, Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien 
(Halle, 1844), a huge mass of information about these 
folk and their speech. A wonderful little people ! 
keeping its oriental race and manners so long unmixed 
with the surrounding European millions, and using, 
however largely corrupted, a real language of its 
own. 

The gypsies who chiefly frequent the New Forest, 
probably but a few scores in count, possibly a couple 



GYPSIES. 23 

of hundred, seem to be steadily diminishing in number. 
In their struggle for life the new element of rural 
police bears hard on them ; they must c move on/ 
and are, nominally, only allowed to stay one night 
in a spot; but this rule is often evaded. Tired of 
moving on (involuntarily), many English gypsies 
have moved off, of late years, to America and 
Australia. The ' Stanleys ' and 6 Lees ' of the Forest 
keep mainly to the traditional businesses of making 
baskets, brooms, clothes-pegs ; some go round mend- 
ing rush-bottom chairs, some play the fiddle in 
taverns. The men are to be seen at fairs with 
donkeys and forest ponies for sale, while the women 
and lads do the honours of * Aunt Sally,' or some other 
popular game. The local magistrates and rural po- 
licemen give no unkindly report of the gypsy people ; 
consider them no way dangerous, and moderately 
honest. They are seldom 6 pulled up,' and then but 
for minor offences, and when they are fined the money 
is always forthcoming. A gypsy is seldom without 
ready money, and they help one another freely in case 
of need ; nor are their old or sick ever thrown upon 
parish relief. They keep no pigs, and have no forest 
privileges ; they steal wood, but are not suspected 
much of poaching ; now and again, however, a clever 
greyhound is seen in their company. Their horse- 
stealing notoriety has faded away. Within the last 
tAventy years, I am told, many of the New Forest 
gypsies have become much less peculiar and exclusive 



24 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

in their habits ; their men and women marry non 
gypsy mates, and half-gypsies are growing commoner 
than the true breed. People unmistakeably of the 
dark strain are to be seen at work in the harvest gangs ; 
and now and again, not often, you find one of them a 
sailor in a yacht or merchant ship. But there are still 
some who pride themselves on keeping unmixed their 
ancient blood ; and a few years ago, I am informed, 
a gypsy girl of remarkable beauty, one of the Stanleys, 
refused, on that ground, to marry a well-to-do farmer 
of the parish of Fawley. It is extremely hard to get 
any trustworthy account of their more intimate life — 
for they never apply to the law, and seldom quarrel 
seriously. What is their education ? Does one now 
and again rise in social rank ? Is there any lady, for 
example, in our day (I have heard rumour of such 
things), in whose cheek, as in the little Duchess's in 
that wonderful poem, might be recognised 

The tinge 
As when of the costly scarlet wine 
They drip so much as will impinge 
And spread in a thinnest scale afloat. 
One thick gold drop from the olive's coat, 
Over a silver plate whose sheen 
Still through the mixtnre shall be seen ? 

In addition to other good authorities I have con- 
sulted an experienced rural postman of the Forest, 
who is also a gamekeeper; he still, he says, comes 
pretty often on a gypsy camp ; they sometimes, though 
rarely, get letters ; he thinks that very few of them 



GYPSIES. 25 

can read or write. He believes they have no religion. 
The old and young go begging ; some of the old women 
tell fortunes. What puzzles him most is what they do 
with their dead; he never saw or heard of a gypsy's 
funeral. He has often met five or six of them in a 
public-house talking to each other in their own lingo, 
and sometimes quarrelling in their drink ; but they 
very seldom get taken up. The regular gypsies never 
sleep in a house winter or summer. 

As to creed, marrying, &c, my own impression is 
that they have certain traditional tenets, unknown in 
their case to the exoteric world, and most likely not 
very important in any sense; while as to outward 
observances they take the easiest way that serves, ac- 
cording to time and place, and glide along like a snake 
through a coppice, with eyes constant to the practical 
objects of getting what they want, and of shunning 
danger. Here they always profess to belong to the 
Church of England, and sometimes use its forms of 
baptism, marriage, and burial, but I think never attend 
service. 

One Sunday evening in late autumn, I was roving, 
lonely and moody enough, under a gray sky and 
thinning yellow leaves, and found myself about sun- 
down in Whitley Wood. Turning a clump of hollies, 
I came suddenly on two gypsy tents. There was 
an old woman, over seventy she said, with cunning 
mahogany face, and hair still black ; her son a good- 
looking man of five-and-thirty ; his wife, who was 



26 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

nursing her tenth child ; and the other nine children, all 
living and well, were swarming about, or not far away. 
There were also an elder married pair, who, I found, 
had no children. The father of the ten, Tom by name, 
happened to be an old acquaintance of mine. I had 
found him, some years before, lying ill and all but 
speechless with quinsy, and had done him some service. 
It had struck me then, how miserable the case of a sick 
gypsy ; but further reflection suggested that probably, 
in most cases of illness, a ragged tent would be better 
than Guy's or Bartholomew's, and no treatment than 
too much. Great hospitals are good means of training 
doctors, rather than of curing patients. Still, Tom in 
his quinsy seemed in need of medical aid, and I had 
sent him some. 

The older married woman had a closed book in 
her hand. ' It's a Bible, your good honour ; parson 
in north parts o' the Forest giv' it us t'other day ; and 
we was a-readin' till the daylight failed.' They had 
begun at the beginning, and had found some things 
that puzzled them, and which they were discussing 
when I came up. ( Who was Cain's wife, your honour? ' 
I could not tell them. ' And who was Cain afraid of, 
when he asked to have a mark put on him lest people 
should kill him? The world was empty.' Answer: 
f We are to suppose that Cain had a long life before 
him, and people quickly increased in numbers.' Elder 
Gypsy man (tentatively) : e Your honour, I was in 
a shop in Southampton last week, and I heard a 



NOTIONS OF GIVING AND RECEIVING. 27 

gentleman say, " The Bible's a bad book/' says he.' 
P. Walker : f It was not a wise thing to say.' Younger 
Gypsy woman (trimming sail) : tf Maybe he'll find his 
mistake when his last hour comes.' And so we talked 
awhile — a conversation in itself extremely unimportant, 
but it was curious to find these vagrants, too, amusing 
themselves with a discussion of Biblical difficulties. 
My good offices to Tom's quinsy were remembered, 
and made a new gift on my part inevitable ; so, shutting 
it into the baby's hand, and receiving a number of bless- 
ings in return, I took my departure through the dark 
alleys of the wood. 

In any case, you must not hold converse with a 
gypsy without having a coin ready as tag to the inter- 
view. It would be entirely against good manners to 
omit it. In their mixture of independence of bearing 
and freedom in conversation, with readiness to accept 
a gift, they are very like Irish folk, who in this, as in 
so many characteristics, are curiously unlike their Saxon 
co-mates. 

This Irish readiness to accept a gift, is not mean 
or greedy. You, with whom they have entered 
into friendly human intercourse, have evidently much 
more money than they ; and it is but natural, and for 
the pleasure of both parties, that there should be some 
overflow from the plenum to the vacuum. They accept 
it freely and avowedly as a gift, and with a fully- 
implied understanding that in the case of contact 
with an emptier than themselves, they are in turn 



28 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

ready to play donor. And so they are. If you 
give nothing, no insult follows ; at most, if ex- 
pectation rose high, there may be some cunning little 
touch of satire. If they have done you some actual 
service, they are by no means anxious to be paid 
for it, in the hard shape of an equivalent. They 
wish the transaction to be gift for gift, and are usually 
quite willing that you should be the obliged party if 
you prefer it. This is entirely a distinct feeling from 
the universal English love of a fee, ( a tip,' which so 
-disagreeably astonishes American visitors to the old 
country. The Saxon by no means looks for a pure 
gift in any case. That, to his habit of mind, would 
mean beggary. But he thinks ' nothing for nothing ' 
an obviously just principle. ' If I do anything for 
you, what will you pay me ?' — and if you withhold the 
pay, he growls and threatens. 

Indisputable and priceless are the sturdy qualities 
of the Saxon ; those of the Kelt are tenderer and finer. 
To this day exists an astonishing incompatibility be- 
tween them, who have lived together so long, and a 
deep-seated difficulty of mutual understanding. People 
easily misconceive and dislike the very virtues of those 
who are of temperament and habits unlike their own. 

The Gypsies, for their part, try to pick up a penny 
or a shilling howsoever they can without much risk, 
and to secure such creature-comforts as their shifting 
and shifty manner of life allows. Though now, perhaps, 
slowly merging into the general mass of the popu- 



LOCAL DIALECT. 29 

lation, they still may be counted a strange little 
tribe in our midst, with a very curious wild flavour. 
Among the most usual places in this district for 
gypsy encampments are Norley Wood, and Shirley 
Holmes, near Lymington ; The Nodes, near Hythe ; 
Bartley Regis, in Ealing parish ; Crow's ISTest Bottom, 
near Bramshaw ; Minstead-manor-bounds on the west 
side; Marbro' Deep, near Holmsley. Several large 
parties were seen encamped, during the icy weather of 
a recent cold January. 

The Foresters of the humbler class are on familiar 
terms with the f Gyps,' or ( Gypos,' but can tell you 
little about them, having (like perhaps most poor 
people) but little observation or curiosity, still less 
reflection or speculation ; and when they do receive 
impressions, lacking words to convey them. 

The Foresters are not distinguished for mental gifts 
or for excellence of manners; and indeed the same 
might be said of the inhabitants of some of the adjacent 
towns, who now and again recall to the stranger's mind 
that alliterative epithet which is sometimes applied to 
Hampshire people. Would it be fanciful, or a too 
hasty induction from limited experience, to set down 
the Wilts and Dorset folk as gentler and more kindly ? 
Though it is a good while since Cerdic landed on its 
coast, Hants (the fair Isle of Wight included) is still 
very Saxon in manners and temperament. ; and the 
word Saxon has in these respects carried one consistent 
reputation from the earliest times ; till that absurd 



SO STILL IN THE FOREST. 

modern phrase e the Anglo-Saxon race ' came into 
fashion in newspapers and stump-oratory. The Angles 
and the Saxons were much of a muchness ; and what 
of the Scandinavians, and the Normans, and the 
Britons themselves ? 

The dialect of the Forest and its vicinity is ungainly 
in sound, harsh and drawling, with no tone in it, and 
spoken mainly with the teeth shut: — c Hev'ee zeen t' 
fox, Jurge ? they'se lost he, I bet ! ' e Na-a-a ! I zeed 
'en goo into vuzz at t' earner o' thic 'ood ' — ( Big 
un?' — c Ya-a-as!' — '"Where bist gwine now then?' — 
6 Whoam.' — 6 Thee's betterr come with I.' The c r ' has 
not a burr, but a thin slurring sound. They have a 
good many words not usual in book English, and some 
of them expressive ; for example — e flisky,' small, like 
small rain ; i louster,' noise, confusion ; f slummakin,' 
slouchy, careless, untidy ; ( wivvery,' giddy, as when 
the head swims ; ( mokins ' are coarse gaiters ; e hum- 
water ' is a cordial with mint in it. They call the bog- 
myrtle or sw T eet-gale the c gold-withy,' and the white- 
beam ( hoar-withy.' The w^ord i idle ' always means 
light-minded, careless, flippant, which is traceable to 
the Ano-lo-Saxon meaning. 



o 



When Mr. Gilpin (of the ( Forest Scenery,' &c.) 
came to this locality in 1777 as vicar of Boldre parish, 
including a large slice of the southern part of the 
Forest, he found the people rude and semi-savage, a 
wild flock, poachers, smugglers, despisers of laws and 



WILLIAM • GILPIN. 31 

morals ; and during his stay among them of twenty- 
seven years he faithfully sought to improve them, not 
without effect. William Gilpin, a lineal descendant 
of Bernard Gilpin, called e The Apostle of the North,' 
was born in 1724 at Scaleby Castle, near Carlisle, the 
house of his grandfather, e a counsellor of note,' 1 
whose eldest son, being a bad manager, ran into debt, 
and was at last obliged to sell the family place. The 
second son, John Bernard, entered the army, and when 
a captain of foot got command of a company of In- 
valids at Carlisle, where he settled. He had married 
at the age of twenty, his wife being eighteen, and they 
' lived together in conjugal felicity fifty years,' says 
the tombstone at Carlisle. Their son William entered 
Queen's College, Oxford, January 1740 (N.S.); B.A. 
1744 ; ordained 1746, and made curate of Irthington ; 
M.A. 1748. In 1752, age twenty-nine, he became 
principal assistant at the school of the Rev. Daniel 
Sanxay, Cheam, Surrey, who in a year retired in 
Gilpin's favour. He now married. His own account, 
dated thirty years later, is simple and pleasing : — 

c When my uncle was in possession of Scaleby Castle, 
before his affairs went wrong, he took a little niece, a 
atherless child, to bring up. He had no children of 
his own, and his wife and he considered her as such, 
nor were any father or mother fonder of any of their 
own children than they were of her. She used often 

1 From letter of Eev. "W. G., quoted 'hj Eev. Kichard Warner in 
Literary Recollections, London, L830, vol. i. p. 316, &c. 



82 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

to be at Carlisle to play with her cousins, and her 
cousins were as often at Scaleby to play with her. 
She was a pretty little girl ; aud everybody said she 
was a very good little girl. In- short, one of her 
cousins, though only a schoolboy, took a particular 
fancy to her. He soon after made his father and 
mother his confidants ; and they were far from dis- 
couraging him. They probably thought (as I do now) 
that early attachments, though not favourable to am- 
bition and worldly schemes, are far from being un- 
favourable to virtue ; and my father, good man (which 
alone would endear his memory to me), painted her 
picture and sent it me to Oxford; though the poor 
o-irl herself was then ignorant of the occasion. In 
process of time, however, the plot began to open. The 
two cousins became acquainted with each other's sen- 
timents ; and though (as neither of them had anything 
to depend on but themselves) it was several years 
before the drama was concluded by a marriage, yet at 
length this step was thought prudent by aU their 
friends; and they have now (1791) lived together 
about thirty years, without having been almost as 
many days separated. No marriage could be more 
happy. All their schemes succeeded ; and they are 
now, in their old age, in affluent circumstances, and 
have six fine grandchildren to bear their name after 
them. They have often said to each other, they never 
knew what could be called an affliction : and only 
have to hope that God will be pleased to work with 



WILLIAM GILPIX. 33 

them by felicity, as He often does with others by 
calamity.' ] 

In his school he seems to have been a sort of minor 
Arnold ; took great pains with the morals and religion 
of his pupils, had a constitutional code, and in certain 
cases tried a culprit by a jury of his fellows, e bound 
by honour.' ' I never knew,' he says, f an improper 
verdict given.' Two daughters were born to him, who 
died young, and two sons, of whom the elder went to 
America, married, and grew rich, settling at Philadel- 
phia. The second son, another William, went into the 
Church, and succeeded his father as master of Cheam 
School in 1777. The father, 54 years old by this time, 
had kept the school for twenty-five years, and now re- 
tired with about 10,000£. saved. His many excellent 
qualities, both as man and teacher, made many of his 
old pupils friends of his for life, and one of these, 
William Mitford, Esq., now presented him to the vicar- 
age of Boldre. He had thus, altogether, an income 
of perhaps 7001. a year. In his large parish, fifteen to 
eighteen miles in circuit, Mr. Grilpin went about 
actively, visiting the poor cottagers and helping them 
as well as he knew how. As a preacher, he had an 
impressive earnestness and simplicity ; and it is re- 
lated that he once compelled a certain rich married 
farmer to give up a mistress whom he kept, to the 
general scandal, and, moreover, to appear in church, 
led in by the two churchwardens, and to repeat after the 

1 Same authority. 
D 



-34 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

curate a paper of confession and contrition, after which 
the vicar preached a grave, appropriate sermon. Mr. 
Gilpin was large-built and rather corpulent, with a 
good voice and dignified presence, fit for a head mas- 
ter, fit for a vicar. His face, somewhat fat, with a 
roundish bald head (I have seen his likeness in crayons, 
lianodno* in Walhampton Park, a house which he often 
frequented), chiefly expresses a grave and cheerful 
benevolence, spiced with some hint of mental alacrity. 
Before coming to Boldre he had published a book, 
< Lives of the Reformers,' including an account of his 
ancestor Bernard. After being released from the 
school, he indulged his love of scenery and sketching 
by making frequent tours, generally, or perhaps always, 
accompanied by his wife, in some of the most beautiful 
parts of England and Scotland, a very uncommon kind 
of amusement in those days ; and produced in succes- 
sion the following publications, which soon gave him a 
considerable reputation, and are still sought after and 
valued: ( On Picturesque Beauty' [Scottish High- 
lands] ; Ditto [English Lake District] ; f Forest 
Scenery ' ; c Essays on Picturesque Beauty ' ; ' Pic- 
turesque Travels and the Art of Sketching Landscape '; 
' On Prints ' ; ( The Wye ; ' ( Picturesque Remarks on 
the West of England ' ; all embellished with acquatinta 
engravings after the author's drawings. He also pub- 
lished ' Sermons ' ; c An Exposition of the New Testa- 
ment ' ; ( Moral Contrasts ' ; ( Amusements of Clergy- 
men ' ; ( Life of John Trueman and Richard Atkins, 



GILPIN' 8 DRAWINGS. 35 

for the use of Servants' Halls, Farmhouses, and Cot- 
tages ' ; and an c Account of William Baker/ one of his 
humble parishioners. He was very careful and deli- 
berate in the production of most of his books, keeping 
them in MS. beyond the Horatia.n period, and mean- 
while submitting them to private critics, and often re- 
touching. 

His life at home was simple, pure, and economical ; 
he seldom dined out. ' I never was fond,' he says, 1 
( of eating and drinking ; but, from habit, I have now 
taken a thorough dislike to them both, and never dine 
pleasantly but on my own bit of mutton, and a draught 
of small beer after it (for I never drink wine), and so 
the job is over.' 

His delight was to stroll after breakfast into the 
grove behind his vicarage, note-book in hand ; to im- 
prove his little grounds and garden ; to visit in turn 
his parishioners, rich and poor, especially the latter 
(not forgetting their bodily wants) ; to address kind 
words of greeting, inquiry, admonition, or encourage- 
ment to every one he met in his walks ; to come home 
to his bit of mutton, his dear good wife and family, 
and his pen and ink drawings in the evening. His 
style of art was not the exact and realistic, but the 
bold and generalising — verging often on what Mr. 
Buskin calls the Blottesque; his illustrations of the 
Highland and other scenery only possessed — and ac- 
cording to his convictions were right, inasmuch as they 

1 Letter of his, quoted by "Warner, i. 359. 



36 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

only possessed — a kind of broad and sweeping resem- 
blance to real scenes; and his very numerous later 
drawings were nearly all fancy sketches, exemplifying 
the true rules of e picturesque beauty,' as he conceived 
them. These sketches — made with a reed pen and 
a brownish ( iron-water ' ink, and afterwards ( toned ' 
with a yellow wash — he used to give away freely to 
his friends, until it came into his mind that he might 
in this way make some money for the benefit of 
his poorer parishioners. He had already, out of the 
profits of his books, built and opened a school at Boldre 
for the children of day labourers — twenty boys to be 
taught reading, writing, and ciphering ; twenty girls, 
reading, sewing, and spinning. To this school he 
wished to leave a permanent endowment, and also an 
aid to the school at Brockenhurst, and sold for these 
ends a collection of his drawings, received 1,200?. for 
them, and placed it in the Three per Cents. The sum 
being still insufficient to carry out all his intentions, 
he went to work again with his reed- pen, at the age of 
78, and in two years produced a large number of draw- 
ings. These, e the last effort of my eyes,' were sold by 
auction at Christie's, and produced no less than 1,625?. 
The schools were endowed accordingly, and the Boldre 
children, in addition to being taught free of all charge, 
receive yearly — the boys a jacket, pair of breeches, and 
a green vest ; the girls a green frock and black petti- 
coat. The school-house, shadowed by a pair of tall 
lindens, stands on the road-side, between the church 



THE GREEN SCHOOL. 37 

and the vicarage, and the school, locally called ( The 
Green School,' is still alive, but not flourishing. The true 
causes of this unhealthy condition are not easy to get 
at, but certainly the lamp which old Mr. Gilpin left 
trimmed, with a careful provision for keeping it alight, 
now burns but languidly. 1 Make his icill as he may, 
the possibility of a man's extending his power, accor- 
ding to any formal plan, into future generations, is 
always very problematic. 

There are three notable trees, now nourishing in 
Boldre parish, which are connected with this good old 
vicar's memory. You may see them in the course of 
a moderate walk. About a mile from Lymington, 
well sheltered among soft woody slopes, stands the 
comfortable vicarage of gray and red bricks, with trim 
flowery lawn guarded by Scotch firs, and slanting little 
meadow, beyond which rises the grovy hill in whose 
wood-walks Mr. Gilpin used to stray. Near the south- 
west corner of the house stands conspicuous an un- 
usually fine Occidental Plane-tree, tall, shapely, 
healthy, which the vicar used to admire more than 
seventy years ago, and has celebrated in the 6 Forest 
Scenery.' This Plane was the vicar's favourite home- 
tree. 

In his walks, he was fond of visiting a Yew, some 
two miles distant, — 

f A tree,' he says, c of peculiar beauty ... It 
stands not far from the banks of Lymington River, 

1 Measures are now (December 1872) being taken to revive it. 



38 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

on the left bank as you look towards the sea, between 
Boydon Farm and Boldre Church. It occupies a small 
knoll, surrounded with other trees, some of which are 
yews, but of inferior beauty. A little stream washes 
the base of the knoll, and winding round, forms it into 
a peninsula. If any one should have curiosity to visit 
it from this description, and by the help of these land- 
marks, I doubt not but he may find it at any time 
within the space of these two or three centuries in great 
perfection, if it suffer no external injury.' 1 

There it stands at this day ; now, in winter-time, 
sombrely conspicuous as you approach it among the 
naked gray boughs of the oak-coppice. 

The third tree connected with Mr. Gilpin's memory 
is a Maple. ' One of the largest maples I have seen,' 
he wrote, e stands in the churchyard of Boldre in the 
New Forest.' 2 This churchyard is beautifully situ- 
ated on a hill about half-way between Brockenhurst 
and Lymington, and so thickly surrounded by large 
elms that the square embattled church-tower is not 
visible in the summer landscape, and scarcely in the 
winter. But from the churchyard you have glimpses 
through leafy screens, or thinner network of bough and 
twig, of the wide stretching woodland in which it 
stands. The church, the oldest part (they say) Saxon, 
another part thirteenth century, patchwork as it now 
is, retains on the whole a quaint and pleasant rusticity. 
A year ago it still owned an ancient window, but that 

1 Forest Scenery, vol. i. p. 95. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 57. 



BOLDRE CHURCH. 39 

has now been gutted! — filled up with clean handsome 
new stone (och hone !), and the gayest of bright Lon- 
don glass (alas ! ). There is something that deserves 
philosophical investigation in the attitude of John 
Bull's mind to his national relics of antiquity. He 
holds hard to the customary and familiar, and is thus 
inclined — not aesthetically or sentimentally, but in a 
cat-like manner as it were — to keep old things as they 
are ; but he has also a passion for trimness and tidiness, 
a practicality of mind that is vexed by any appearance 
(however beautiful or in itself harmless) which is at all 
connected with notions of disrepair, neglect, poverty ; 
and against this love of comfortable trimness, no 
matter how ugly, the feeling of cat-like conservatism 
counts for nothing almost, if they come into competi- 
tion — is daffed aside (if any one appeals to it) as a 
whim and folly. It cannot be too often repeated, 
until it is generally felt and acknowledged, that all 
the significant public relics and traces of the past, 
great and little, are sacred things, not ours to de- 
stroy (whether by demolition or ( restoration ? ), but 
ours to preserve for those who now walk the earth, 
and for those who are to come after us. Absolute, in- 
evitable necessity can alone justify our laying one vio- 
lating finger upon any such connecting link in the life 
of a nation and of mankind. But to return to our 
churchyard Maple. Maples in England are seldom 
more than bushes ; this is a good-sized tree, about six 
or seven feet round, and something like a dwarfish ol 



40 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

oak. Under its brandies is the plain square-cornered 
tomb of William Gilpin and his wife, with this inscrip- 
tion : — 

s In a quiet mansion beneath this stone, secure from 
the afflictions, and still more dangerous enjoyments of 
life, lye the remains of William Gilpin, sometime 
vicar of this parish, together with the remains of 
Margaret, his wife. After living above fifty years 
in happy union, they hope to be raised in God's good 
time, through the atonement of a blessed Redeemer 
for their repented transgressions, to a state of joyful 
immortality ; there it will be a new joy to meet several 
of their o-ood neighbours who lye scattered in these 
sacred precincts around them. He died April 5 th, 
1804, at the age of 80. She died April 14th, 1807, 
at the age of 82.' 

His last illness was very short, and his healthy, 
virtuous, and happy life closed in peace. It is whole- 
some and pleasant to reflect on such lives, of which 
there are always a great many in the world, most of 
them undistinguished by anything publicly memorable. 
Mr. Gilpin, in one of his letters, speaking of a visit 
which he received from his son from America, says : 
6 His chief employment while he was here, was tran- 
scribing a family record, which I drew up some time 
ago, of my great grandfather, my grandfather, and 
father, who were all very valuable men ; and I en- 
couraged him in it for the sake of William, Bernard, 
and Edwin, whom it may hereafter have a tendency 



A GOOD CLERGYMAN. 41 

to excite to honourable deeds. Indeed I have often 
thought such little records might be very useful in 
families, whether the subjects of them were good or 
bad. A lighthouse may serve equally the purpose of 
leading you into a haven, or deterring you from a rock. 
I have the pleasure, however, to reflect that my three 
ancestors (beyond whom I can obtain no family anec- 
dotes) were all beacons of the former kind.' 

One can fancy Mr. Gilpin going benevolently about, 
(his mind and note-book at the same time busied a good 
deal with his next work on ' Picturesque Beauty ') now 
stopping a farmer or a schoolchild with friendly smile 
and word, now carrying good advice and coin of the 
realm into some poor cottage, distributing orders for 
coals and blankets in the winter, consoling the sick, 
admonishing the lawless, &c, &c. — he also (no way 
disgracing his ancestors) a i valuable ' man and most 
kindly. Yet, with all his benevolent and pious activity, 
it may perhaps be doubted whether our good friend 
had much real insight into human character, or much 
real intercourse of mind (rare between those of different 
grades) with his humbler parishioners. There is not 
seldom found an amiable blindness in such men as he — 
amiable perhaps, yet not commendable ; for that course 
which is sure of applause as ' practical benevolence ' 
may often (from defect of clear perceptions, and con- 
sequent sound conclusions) do injustice, and on the 
w r hole be harmful to society. 

Some twenty paces westward from the vicar's tomb 



42 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

(I have paid it many a visit) stands a headstone with the 
following inscription! — the vicar's composition : c Here 
rests from his Labour William Bakee, whose In- 
dustry and Frugality, whose Honesty and Piety, were 
long an Example to this Parish. He was born in 17 10, 
and died in 1791.' This is the Baker of whom Mr. 
Gilpin also published an ' account/ for the wider dis- 
semination of that old peasant's good example ; but 
Mr. Warner, the admiring friend and sometime the 
curate of Mr. Gilpin, conscientiously makes the follow- 
ing mortifying disclosure : *■ — 

6 William Baker was an old rustic, resident in a wild 
part of the parish of Boldre. In one of his walks Mr. 
Gilpin had lighted upon his cottage. On entering it 
he found its inhabitant, an aged, but stout and athletic 
man, eating his humble dinner. All within was neat 
and clean, and something indicative of strong sense and 
a cheerful mind appeared in the countenance of the 
old peasant. In conversation he proved himself well 
versed in the Bible ; full of maxims of prudence and 
economy ; and apparently of the most open, blunt, and 
independent character. Highly interested by his visit, 
Mr. Gilpin frequently repeated it ; and from the con- 
versations which passed during this intercourse, he 
drew up that beautiful account which he published in 
the work above-mentioned. The misapprehension of 
Baker's real character was not done away till some 
time after the death of the old man ; and, considering 

1 Literary Recollections, vol. i. p. 343. 



OLD WILLIAM BAKER. 43 

it as exemplary at the time of his decease, Mr. Gilpin 
wrote a short epitaph, and had it engraven on Baker's 
tombstone, as a salutary monition to the parishioners 
of Boldre [sly, stolid rustics with thoughts of their 
own !], who were in the same humble class of life with 
the deceased. At length, however, he was undeceived ; 
and had the sorrow rather than the mortification to find 
that Baker had been, through life, a worthless and 
flagitious character ; that age, instead of curing, had 
only altered the nature of his vices ; and that by all, 
except the pastor, he had ever been known and despised 
as a consummate rogue, an oppressive extortioner, and 
a base hypocrite.' 

That headstone must have weighed more or less on 
Mr. Gilpin's mind after the discovery. Could he — 
ought he to have added a postscript? Requiescas, if thou 
canst, old William Baker ! thy pastor did not, I suspect, 
mean to include thee in that friendly hope on his tomb- 
stone of meeting ' several ' of his good neighbours who 
lie near him. Living and dead thou hast cheated the 
good vicar ; and by means of this graven testimony 
dost perennially cheat the churchyard moraliser. I 
have no doubt that Mr. Warner is substantially ac- 
curate in the matter, but I should like to hear some 
more particulars of this cunning old William. 

In Boldre church is preached every 18th of March, 
6 the Wild-beast Sermon,' founded many years ago to 
commemorate e for ever ' the escape of a Mr. Worsley 
from the jaws of a lion in Africa. In Boldre church 



44 STILL IN THE FOREST. 

Robert Southey married for his second wife Miss 
Caroline Bowles, of Lymington — a literary marriage. 
He was then a worn-out man. Over-industry in 
literary labour is apt to tell dismally both on the man 
and on his work. How much too much Southey read 
and wrote ! How sure he was of literary immortality ! 
How faded already are his name and influence ! Yet 
one is grateful to him for Q Kehama ' and ( Thalaba ' — 

Sail on, sail on, said Thalaba, 
Sail o", in the name of Allah ! — 

not as poetry but as wild stories. 

This church stands near the middle point of the 
southern boundary of the Forest. Northward for fif- 
teen miles or so, stretch the old woods, the moorlands, 
the new plantations, with a few farms and domains 
interspersed — some 70,000 acres in all, producing to 
the Crown a profit of about 10,000/. a year. It is a 
free and pleasant space to ramble in, although (to be 
accurate) the New Forest has no very remarkable 
beauties. There are no romantic hills or glens, only 
two or three brooks, and those not of the best, no 
ponds, no rocks (a great want). But whoever shall 
chance to be invited to one of those country houses 
that pleasantly dot the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, 
most urbanely rural of villages, let him not be in a 
hurry to refuse. 

Over and above the delights of a cultivated and 
friendly society, there is plenty to interest the sports- 



LYNDHURST. 45 

man, the naturalist, or the general rambler and in- 
quisitive person. In e Rufus's Hall,' at the Queen's 
House (built in the reign of James or Charles ), he 
may attend a forest court, and hear the trial of some 
poacher or wooclstealer, no longer liable to lose life or 
eyes ; and may, perhaps, learn a new meaning to him 
of the word mote, namely, stump or stool of a felled 
tree. In the showy new church hard-by he may see 
Mr. Leighton's fresco of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, 
and some glass designed by Mr. Burne Jones. An 
easy walk will carry him to the beechen shade of 
Mark Ash, or the mossy lawns and winding paths 
of Whitley Wood, or to the vale which tradition 
points out as the scene of the Red King's death. 
From certain parts of the higher ground he may 
look southward over seven or eight successive ridges 
of woodland to the wavy soft blue hills of the Isle 
of Wight. He may gather in their seasons many a 
fern and flower — sundew, and great trefoil, and deep 
blue gentian, on the marsh ; ( tutsan,' a St. John's 
wort, on open ground, whose berries, the people say, 
are coloured with Danes' blood; the lung-wort or 
c snake-flower,' rose-blossomed wild-balm, and among 
the bracken of Knightwood the tall gladiolus ; may 
hear the tap of the woodpecker, the rustle of the harm- 
less snake, perhaps the warning hiss of the viper ; the 
fern-owl at dusk e whirring in the copse ' ; the hoo ! hoo ! 
of the brown owls somewhere amid the branchy wilder- 
ness ; and (suppose it spring) the songs of the rival 



46 STILL IN THE FOREST 

nightingales with their deep trills, their tio-tio-tio-tix, 
and their e one low piping sound more sweet than all.' 
He may visit the heronry on Vinney Ridge, and 
watch the wide-winged parents floating round the 
tree-tops as they feed their young with eels carried from 
the mudflats of the Solent ; may with good luck see 
the honey-buzzard, the crossbill, the kingfisher, in 
their haunts, and Epops himself, once King of the 
Birds. Or, some long summer afternoon, and far into 
the weird twilight — the moon perchance beginning to 
rise — he may pursue through many a glade and vista 
the shadowy vision of a beauty imagined but never 
wholly realised on earth. 

Beautiful, beautiful Queen of the Forest, 
How art thou hidden so wondrous deep ? 

Bird never sung there, fay never morriced, 
All the trees are asleep. 

Now her flitting fading gleam 

Haunts the woodlands wide and lonely ; 

Now a half-rememher'd dream, 
Por his comrade only, 

He shall stray the livelong day 

Through the forest, far away. 

Xear the north-eastern corner of the district lies 
Romsey, with its massive Norman church and adjacent 
park of Broadlands, where Lord Palmerston was lately 
master; near the south-eastern corner is the old-new 
town of Southampton (water-gate to Egypt and 
India), its suburban houses visible from some points, 
in front of the chalk downs that overlook Win- 



ITS BORDERS. 47 

Chester. Beaulieu Heath stretches south, to ruined 
Beaulieu Abbey, of John's and Henry III.'s time, 
its prior's house now the Duke of Buccleuch's. Else- 
where, looking northward, one may see the slender 
far-off signal of Sarum, a stone flower, graceful, to 
use Emerson's image, as the great-mullein stalk — the 
highest spire in England. Kingwood is on the western 
boundary, and the beautiful pastoral vale of the river 
Avon running down to Christchurch and its venerable 
priory church, I was in that church one evening, 
near Christmas time, and stood listening in its huge 
dusky nave while the singers practised their anthem in 
the dim-lit organ loft. Beside me glimmered a white 
marble cenotaph, like a Pieta, a woman bending over 
a dead youth. There was not light to read the in- 
scription, but I knew it well enough, and that it 
commemorated a certain poet drowned in the Bay of 
Spezia : the inscription partly in his own words — 

He lias outsoar'd the shadow of our night, 
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain ; 

And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
Can touch him not and torture not again. 

The house of his son, the Baronet, is not far off: and 
in Bournemouth churchyard is the grave of Sir Percy's 
grandfather, William Godwin, whose dust came hither 
by strange adventure, and now lies quiet amid a crowd 
of more orthodox tombstones. 



48 AT WINCHESTER. 



CHAPTER III. 



AT WINCHESTEB. 



St. Giles's Hill— College— Cathedral— Destruction of Old Things- 
Saint Swithin — Keats — Eev. Thomas Warton — Culture. 

Fkom St. Giles's Hill one looks down on the famous 
old city. Its cathedral among lofty trees, Wykeham's 
College with the lads at cricket, the water-meadows 
leading to Saint Cross, the swelling green downs with 
one grove, a e peculiar coronet,' on St. Catherine's Hill, 
show fair in the May sunlight. Methinks a flagstaff 
would stand well at one angle of the low cathedral 
tower. Brisk and clear runs the shallow river below, 
by small gray and red houses and their gardens, mill- 
sluices, the quaint little flint-built church of St. Peter's 
Chesil, and a vine-clad remnant of the city wall. 

I pass under the college archway and courts gray 
with time, green with new foliage, and see, with a na- 
tural sigh, the fine lads strolling careless in cap and 
gown. But, surely, regrets for the past, if natural, are 
vain — if vain, not to be dwelt on ; if dwelt on, foolish. 
Are these boys all happy, too ? Many a ' fag ' (the 
fagging is severe, and often cruel) is longing for man- 



SCHOOLBOYS. 49 

hood and freedom. Even in play hours he must sub- 
mit to the will and caprice of an oldster. ( Grood for 
him on the whole — prepares him for the battle of life.' 
Perhaps so ; but perhaps (along with ( cram,' chapel, 
and other things) it prepares him to make life a battle 
— a scene of fierce unscrupulous rivalry, instead of 
peaceful effort and mutual help. Life must have its 
battles, to be well fought out when each crisis comes ; 
but life ought not to be a battle. Very far from it. 

The book-shop outside the gate is full of college boys ; 
at the next-door pastry-cook's the younger ones swarm 
like bees. Up those steps, the dining-hall still sets its 
tables with the old-world square wooden trencher, but 
also now-a-days with knife and fork ; and tea flows 
morn and even, where, beer in their fathers' time was 
the only lawful liquor. A famous novelist of our day 
(who deals much in cathedrals) said to me, ( We had 
no tea or coffee ;' — he was a Wykhamist— f but beer, as 
much beer as you liked — beer at breakfast, beer at 
dinner, beer at supper, beer under your bed.' Beer 
sounds barbarous ; but clean home-brewed is a good 
thing. Our novelist is a burly man, and so was 
Cobbett, who detested ' slops.' 

Some of the big lads are at cricket, and with a will. 
Terribly swift the athletic bowler swings in his heavy 
ball overhand ; the well-greaved warrior, his opponent, 
sends it whizzing off the bat. The sport is now 
made a serious business. It takes money to rig out 
a cricketer; he goes forth as to a field of battle, 

E 



50 AT WINCHESTER. 

emulates c professionals ' in his style of play, and in 
public matches calls in their aid — these professional 
gentlemen, by the bye, being much akin to horse- 
jockeys and pugilists. To-day in our railway carriage 
was a gentleman summoned by telegraph to his son at 
this school ; a cricket-ball had broken the boy's nose, 
and his father meant to take him to a London doctor 
by the evening train. 

Full-clothed in freshest verdure tremble the lofty 
lindens of the Close ; firm as a rock stands the gray 
fortress-like Cathedral, its oldest stonework undecayed 
as though built yesterday. A side-wicket admits to 
the vast interior, with massy clustered pillars, and roof 
high-embowed over the coffins of old kings : solemn 
and monumental the weighty transept arches and 
plain thick pillars of Norman work. Noble, too, are 
the clustered columns of the nave. Yet I wish, on the 
whole, that Bishop William and others had with- 
held their hands from perpendicularity. The nave 
windows are to me of ugly form, the tracery of the 
great west window stands an offence, which its fine 
glass hardly condones. And this glass is but a patch- 
work. Upon Cheriton Down, one March day of 
1644, the Roundheads smote the Cavaliers, and, 
leaving many brave men dead and dying on the hill, 
came grimly down into Winchester, and smashed the 
cathedra] windows and monuments. The gathered 
bits of glass, disjecta membra of saints, kings, queens, 
bishops, warriors, a fragment of a motto, a corner of a 



CHUR CH-AR CHITECTURJE. 51 

device, broken as they are, make splendid this tall 
greenish-bluish west window. 

The outside of a great old cathedral, seen from dif- 
ferent points of view, with various relations of parts 
and various groupings with surrounding objects and 
the landscape, I ' always find both impressive and 
entertaining, the interior nearly always disappoint- 
ing. English cathedrals particularly, differing as 
they do in details, are much alike in the general inte- 
rior effect, and that effect is monotonous. In magnifi- 
cence of space, one's imagination is never fulfilled; and 
in that other kind of impressiveness which we desire of 
a great building, mystery, they are usually wanting. 
The baldness of the empty nave, after the first glance, 
is chilling and disheartening ; the choir, on the other 
hand, has a petty parochial look. Often the finest 
thing is some oblique glimpse across the angle of a 
transept. Considering the money, time, earnestness, 
and architectural skill employed in raising so many 
huge perennial structures, one wishes there had been 
more variety of plan, more invention. I picture to 
myself, for one example (in the architecture of dreams), 
a church of long low arcades, converging to a great 
central space of loftiness almost immeasurable to the 
eye. In architecture, methinks, the delight of small- 
ness, in porches, pillars, doors, windows, stairs, arches, 
&c, is not enough considered. I found at Venice 
(and Mr. Ruskin, I remember, approved the observa- 
tion), in the Doge's Palace, in Saint Mark's itself, and 

E 2 



52 AT WINCHESTER. 

throughout the city, the delight of smallness often 
emphasised. 

But whatever we may desire, it were unreasonable 
to look for much originality in the plan of this or that 
building among many, all the produce of one spirit, 
that of Papal Christianity, which of all the virtues 
cultivated conformity, submission, imitation, as the 
most necessary, or rather as the groundwork of the 
rest, and which in every plan (architectural or other) 
started with certain data — inevitable fixed points. One 
should rather wonder, perhaps, to find in papal archi- 
tecture so much variety. The art of painting has 
fared much worse ; witness those leagues of Madonnas, 
Holy Families, and great and little saints, that weary 
our soul in the galleries. 

Passing strange are these great Papal temples, so 
alien to modern thought, so unfit for Protestant wor- 
ship, maintained under such singular conditions — beau- 
tiful anachronisms, venerably incongruous with the 
life around them, standing whole and massive, with 
gray tower and shapely pinnacle, among the landscapes 
of England. 

The western porches of the cathedral have been 
done-up, and look as pretty as a wedding-cake ; the 
college chapel has been done-up ; old Saint Cross is 
partly done-up — well or ill I say not, but done-up they 
are ; and whoever likes clean white stone-work, like a 
door-step on Sunday morning, and fresh painty and the 



OLD BUILDINGS. 53 

brightest coloured glass that an eminent London firm 
can manufacture, and no trace left that can be obliter- 
ated of Time's finger, in tint or line, must be pleased 
with what he finds going on in nearly every old place 
in the island. 

Yet what boots grieving ? The use and sig- 
nificance of a structure gone, how should the thing 
escape ruin of one kind or another ? The piety 
and humanity that founded Saint Cross — church, 
almshouses, dole of food to the wayfarer — sad ghosts 
of these haunt their ancient cloister. The realities 
have fled away, and found (we hope so) new and fitter 
mansions. *Tis no visible ruin as yet, for this endow T - 
ment remains a legal and arithmetical fact, with some 
significance to the thirteen old men, much to the 
wealthy nobleman, their ( master.' Of antique faith 
and bounty, many costly relics crowd this land — 
structures made for perpetual homes of living worship 
and beneficence, and secondarily as hints to men un- 
born to remember now and again their brother's name, 
the founder, with a little prayer breathed to heaven ; 
but now become rather as tombs of old good intentions 
and pious plans, fallen into neglect and well-nigh for- 
getfulness, along with the men in wdiose minds they 
were once warm and potent. Nor even as tombs 
(under costly guardianship) can they escape disfigure- 
ment — preserve the venerableness and beauty of aspect 
so precious in many ways, and so touching. 



54 AT WINCHESTER. 

When everything old has been thoroughly destroyed 
or restored (that is defaced), what a pretty world it 
will be ! 

There are few old4ooking towns left now in England ; 
some years hence there will be fewer, or none ; though 
some old houses, perhaps even a few old back streets 
may linger. The busy builder and contractor, with 
his bricken Smug Street, and stuccoed Victoria Ter- 
race, his elegant modern residences in the outskirts, 
and splendid business frontages in the High Street, is 
taking good care of this, in co-operation with the 
pullers-down and doers-up (corporate and individual) 
of every old public edifice. Villages retain and will 
retain more of the crust of antiquity, where the modern 
spirit does not think it worth while to set up its plate- 
glass and stucco, where gain . and display, both in 
their ugliest forms, do not rule everything. 

Yet even the villages can't always escape, nor the 
village churches. I know two village churches in 
Hampshire near one another, each of which has lately 
been disfigured by the substitution of an ugly modern 
window for a beautiful ancient one. These new win- 
dows, filled with gaudiest glass, are both put up in 
memory of one deceased lady, whose wealthy husband, 
in consultation of course with the legal guardians of those 
edifices, could discover no better manner of displaying 
at once the strength of his grief and of his purse, than 
by the destruction of two delightful bits of architectural 
skill, tenderly tinted by the slow hand of time, hallowed 



SAINT S WITHIN. 55 

by the associations of centuries, linking the living to 
their fathers and predecessors ; and the setting-up in 
permanence of two pieces of vulgar and pretentious 
ugliness. Supposing these latter windows perfection 
in their kind, it were monstrous to substitute them for 
the antique. I could not find that anybody, of any 
class, was pleased or satisfied with the alteration. 
Vanity and purse-pride, ignorance and bad taste, met 
by apathetic complaisance in those who might have 
known better, and egged on, doubtless, by the mercan- 
tile cunning of the tradesman who profited by the 
affair — these were the motives, and here is the result. 
I speak of this, and sharply, with some hope of inducing 
those who have influence and right judgment, not to 
forego, in similar cases, their duty to themselves and 
their neighbours ; and to the world, present and future. 

By an archway, where the little church of St. Law- 
rence lurks behind the houses, we pass into the High 
Street of the White City (taking the old British name 
to have been Caer Gwent), and see its Gothic market- 
cross in a corner, beside the shop of the serious book- 
seller who is always to be found in ecclesiastical 
precincts. 

Saint Swithin, the weather- famous, besides his share 
of patronage in the cathedral, has a little parish-church 
of his own, built by King John over the postern of St. 
Michael. Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, dying circa 
865, his body (as the story goes) was buried at his own 
request, out of humility perhaps, not in the cathedral 



5Q AT WINCHESTER. 

as usual with bishops, hut in the churchyard, where 
the drops of rain might wet his grave; afterwards, 
when he was canonised, the monks resolved to move 
his bones into the cathedral, and the 15th of July was 
fixed upon for the ceremony ; but on that day, and for 
forty days in succession, it rained so violently that the 
plan was given up as displeasing to the saint, and they 
built, instead, a chapel at his grave, where many miracles 
were wrought. Such the tradition, and we all know 
the popular saying, of which one form runs thus : — 

Saint Swithin's day if thou dost rain, 
For forty days it will remain ; 
Saint Swithin's day if thou be fair, 
For forty days 'twill rain na mair. 

Many people, by the bye, forget certain effects of 
the great change in the English calendar made in 1752 
by cutting out eleven whole days, in acceptance of the 
i New Style,' introduced by authority of Pope Gregory 
XIII. in 1582, and adopted by all Catholic nations ; 
but, though it had not merely the Pope but the sun on 
its side, resisted till 1752 by Protestant England, as it 
still is by Russia. That day of the year which we 
now call 26th July is that which belonged to St. 
Swithin by the old way of reckoning, and to which 
reference must be made if we go about to inquire, is 
there any meteorological foundation for this adage ? 
So also that point in the earth's annual voyage which 
about a century ago was called Christmas Day in 
England, is now called the 5th of January. Instead 



THE OLD CALENDAR. 57 

of being but four days from the shortest day, the 
festival was fifteen, falling thus at a time of year when 
the weather is on an average colder : i As the day 
lengthens, the cold strengthens.' We keep the tradi- 
tion of a snowy Christmas, which is the seldomer 
realised because we have changed our almanac. May- 
day, again, Milton's and Herrick's Mayday, is towards 
the middle of the month, not at its beainnino*. How 
needful it is to be on one's guard against words — 
continually tending to slip away from facts and as- 
sume power and authority as in their own right. 

The Irish (a people of most conservative temper in 
many things) still have a high respect for certain holy 
days as reckoned by the Old Style — i Old Christmas,' 
&c. An Irish peasant hardly ever dates by months 
and days in his talk, but by ' set times,' saying, So 
long before or after Christmas, Candlemas, Patrick's 
Day, Corpus Christi, Lammas, Michaelmas, e Holiday ' 
(All Hallows) and so on ; and he keeps reckoning of 
some, if not all, by the Old Style as well as, perforce, 
the Kew. 

Looking down from this old West Gate a-top of the 
High Street, 'tis pleasant to see at the street's end a 
green hill rising bold and steep. Many a pleasant 
country walk stretches out from this ancient city ; 
through the meadows, with clear streams full of gliding 
fish and waving weeds, across little bridges, by willows 
and mills ; over the breezy chalk-downs, wide-viewing, 



58 AT WINCHESTER. 

with farms and hamlets in their vales ; by shady roads 
and field-paths through the corn and clover. Here 
wandered once on a time, solitary and somewhat sad, 
a certain young poet (now for ever young). In these 
fields, one Sunday, among the corn-stacks and orchards, 
he felt and sung the rich sadness of antumn : — 



Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 



Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne ; 

Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

Thou couldst not on this earth, dear Poet, reach the 
autumn, nor the summer of thy life ; yet enough re- 
mains of thine ethereal musings to enrich the world 
and deserve our eternal love. One day, perhaps, I 
shall touch thy very hand, no more fevered with sick- 
ness and care. 

How delightful are Keats's letters, carelessly scrib- 
bled off, simple, kindly, picturesque, with views of life 
and literature at once broad and subtle. No politics 
or gossip of the day, e echoes of the clubs,' personal 
trivialities — merely the intimate chat of a poet, think- 
ing of nature, humanity, and poetry. After all, it is 
permissible to believe, the poet draws the best lot from 



POETS. 59 

Fortune's urn. Whom could lie envy ? Not alone is 
his delight in life the keenest, but his insight the most 
veracious. Yet, ah me, how thin-skinned he is — how 
open to suffering — how sure to suffer, in a world such 
as this ? Is it partly the world's fault, for being such 
a world ? Was Keats, pensive amid the sheaves, a 
happier man than Hodge, who reaped them, and quaffed 
his ale-cup at the harvest-home ? 

6 Happier ' — what is happiness ? Would any man 
deliberately give up a grain of his intellect or sensi- 
bility to win a lower kind of happiness than he was 
born capable of? — escape suffering by virtue of 
stupidity? Here, truly, is a whole catechism of 
questions ; and food for meditation. 

In these Wintonian fields roved another son of the 
Muses, whose e shade ' (as he himself might have ex- 
pressed it) would no doubt disdain association with that 
of the author of Endymion ; I mean the Rev. Thomas 
Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, Professor 
of Poetry, and Poet Laureate, which famous and 
prosperous man of letters came often on a visit to his 
brother, the Rev. Dr. Joseph, master of Winchester 
School, himself a bard of note. 

Where shall the muse, that on the sacred shell, 

Of men in arms and arts renown'd, 
The solemn strain delights to swell ; 
Oh where shall Clio choose a race 
Whom Fame with every laurel, every grace, 

Like those of Albion's envied isle has crown' d ? 

Hush, Reverend Shade ! — yet for thy diligent an- 



60 AT WINCHESTER. 

notation, Tom, of Spenser and of Milton, pass not 
unkindly remembered. Strange, that along with in- 
tense study of these masters thou couldst pursue thine 
own scrannel pipings undismayed. 

Probably it is rather fame than merit, in every de- 
partment, that attracts nine in ten of even the cognos- 
centi. 

But how comes the fame ? — from the consistent and 
accumulative judgment of a few in each generation, in 
whom the divine light of intelligence burns clearest. 
Therefore the cultivated (who know what has been 
said) generally take, on the whole, sound views of past 
work ; while as to contemporary doings they are at 
sea, and sailing every w r ay with the various winds of 
criticism. 

One hears a good deal now-a-days, in England, of 
4 culture ' and ' philistinism,' — a generation or two after 
the Germans have tired of the subject. That culture 
is a good thing hardly admits of contradiction, any more 
than that food and sleep are good things. What our 
literary friends, A, B, and C, mean exactly by the 
word, is rather obscure. It is very certain, at any 
rate, that English University Education and culture 
are not, and never have been, interchangeable terms. 
The Cultured Philistine (if that phrase may be coined) 
hath ever been the favoured son of Alma Mater. Had 
John Keats gone to Oxford, is it likely that he would 
have risen to college honours, wealth, and power, like 
Thomas TVarton ? Methinks the Cultured Philistine 



CULTURE. 61 

is the very Goliath of his people. Who is not daily 
afflicted by the tongue and pen of the over-educated 
man, so fluent and well-worded, so vague and unreal, so 
haughty and so hollow ? He bullies us, and, usually, we 
knock under for a time. But the roll of literary heroes 
is not made up of names such as his. Perhaps the time is 
coming when England (whether under the term of i cul- 
ture ' or some other term) will recognise a set of new 
ideas on education — a faith clear and high, and in 
application as broad as English citizenship. The atmo- 
sphere of our generation is electrical with new thoughts, 
and neither Oxford nor Canterbury, Westminster, 
Winchester, Manchester, nor Little Pedlington, can 
escape the subtle and potent influence. 

Upper Winchester, near the station, is becoming 
thoroughly villafied, as cockney-suburban in appearance 
as Haverstock Hill. But the entrance to a town from 
the railway-station is almost always ugly. How plea- 
santly Winchester must have greeted the coach-tra- 
veller, whirling up the green valley, seeing the great 
cathedral grow larger through its elms, then turning a 
corner of the Close, a corner of the High Street, into 
the court-yard of the f George/ 



J^ 



62 AT FARNHAM. 



CHAPTER IV. 

AT FAKNHAM. 

High Street — Bishop's Palace — ' The Jolly Farmer' — Sketch of William 
Cobbett's Life and Vfritings — His Grave — Crooksbury Hill. 

When you are in the long, flat, well-to-do and modern- 
ish High Street of Farnham (Fern-ham?) you see only 
the High Street, and there is not much to see there ; 
emerging at either end you are among hopgrounds 
— myriads of brown poles in spring, multitudinous 
bowerage in summer; and the hops here grow the 
highest and make the most delicate beer (so the Farn- 
ham folk say) of any hops in England. 

Farnham High Street, running east and west along 
a hollow, is built on either side of a main road : and 
this never gives the proper town effect, for the road is 
thus the chief thing, the street subordinate. The 
smallest town, or even hamlet, wears a certain civic 
importance when it looks like a goal or finish in itself, 
mistress of all the roads that approach it, and older 
than they ; not an accident or afterthought, but an 



THE PALACE. 63 

ancient centre and biding-place of humanity, a heart 
or at least ganglion in the general circulation. A town 
with gates is most complete ; but such towns now (to 
fall into rhyme) are obsolete. 

At back of the houses on the north side of this High 
Street, hop-fields slope upwards to a crowd of great trees 
stretching along; the summit of the hill. Those are the 
Bishop of Winchester's elms ; his palace-tower rises 
proudly amiclstthe circling ruins and the moat (now ahaw- 
thorn dell) of the old castle of Henry III.'s time ; those 
are the Bishop's fallow-deer that troop in scores down 
the richly-shadowed park ; and from his flower and 
fruit garden, made artfully atop of the ancient keep, 
the bishop can comfortably overlook no small piece of 
his diocese in a bird's-eye view. To the left, over the 
wooded vale of Moor Park (Sir W. Temple's and 
Swift's), rises Cobbett's Crooksbury Hill, like a lion 
couchant, heading northwards, shagged with dark fir- 
trees : at our feet are the town and tall square church- 
tower of Farnham. Our bishop, a handsome and 
courteous old gentleman, is rather i Low ' than c High,' 
nor puts forward any such haughty and awful claims as 
his Brother of Salisbury; 1 indeed, they could hardly 
be suggested (at least in the simpler day of his pro- 
motion) by a mitre coming from the Fourth George 
through the fair hands of the Marchioness of Conyng- 
ham. The story of this mitre is perhaps well enough 

1 Questions of ritual and doctrine now little concern Bishops Sumner 
and Hamilton ; both having undergone translation, effectual and final. 



64 AT FARNHAM. 

known. At all events I am not goin^ to tell it. Lord 



may if he likes. 

Down the hill, under those huge episcopal trees; 
across the High Street and the bridge over the little 
river Wey, slow winding through poplars and willow- 
fringed meads ; and so to a high bank bearing a grove 
on its shoulder ; we come to where the road bends 
upwards left to the railway station. Facing the bridge 
stands a public-house, a little back from the road, built 
close at foot of the steep bank, and partly in a quarry 
scooped in its sandy front. 

William Cobbett was born in this house in 1762. 
It was then the residence of his father, a small farmer, 
and does not seem to have been much altered in ap- 
pearance. It is a decent-looking brown-roofed house, 
with two small windows on each side of the open door, 
and five on the second floor ; the sign of i The Jolly 
Farmer ' set on a pole in front, and the thick grove 
shading it on each flank and risino- hiffh above the 
chimneys. 

In my own home in a distant part of the kingdom, 
Cobbett 's name chanced to mix with some of the 
earliest circumstances of my childhood. My father, 
who was then a kind of Tory, had in his younger days 
been a Radical reformer, and subscriber to the Political 
Register, of which paper a long row of volumes bound 
in red stood on a shelf in his bedroom. Always 
curious about books, I did not fail to turn these over, 
and to ask the meaning of the Gridiron picture, and 



COBBETT' S GRANDMOTHER. 65 

who Cobbett was, though I could not make much of 
what I was told, or enjoy, until long afterwards, the 
variety, vigour, and amusing unreasonableness of that 
famous agitator. 

Cobbett has left, dispersed through a hundred 
volumes or more, many pleasing touches of autobio- 
graphy, which are now the best parts of his writing, 
and which might easily enough be combined into a 
distinct picture. 

e With respect to my ancestors [he says], I shall go 
no further back than my grandfather, and for this plain 
reason — that I never heard talk of any prior to him. 
He was a day-labourer ; and I have heard my father 
say that he worked for one farmer from the day of his 
marriage to that of his death, upwards of forty years. 
He died before I was born ; but I have often slept 
beneath the same roof that sheltered him, and where 
his widow dwelt for many years after his death. It 
was a little thatched cottage, with a garden before the 
door. It had but two windows ; a damson-tree shaded 
one, and a clump of filberts the other, Here I and my 
brothers went every Christmas and Whitsuntide to 
spend a week or two, and torment the poor old 
woman with our noise and dilapidations. She used to 
give us milk and bread for breakfast, an apple-pudding 
for dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for our 
supper. Her fire was made of turf cut from the 
neighbouring heath ; and her evening light was a rush 
dipped in grease.' 

F 



66 AT FARNHAM. 

George Cobbett, this old cottager's son, who out of 
earning twopence a day as ploughboy had been able 
to attend evening school, was e learned for a man in 
his rank of life,' understood land-surveying, and had a 
reputation among his country neighbours for experience 
and understanding. ( He was honest, industrious, and 
frugal,' and ' happy in a wife of his own rank, liked, 
beloved, and respected.' He became tenant of a farm, 
on which he and his sons laboured vigorously : — 

' My father used to boast that he had four boys, the 
eldest of whom was but fifteen years old, who did as 
much work as any three men in the parish of Famham. 
I do not remember the time [says William, 
the third (?) of these boys] when I did not earn my 
own living. My first occupation was driving the small 
birds from the turnip- seed and the rooks from the 
pease. When I first trudged afield, with my wooden 
bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, 
I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles ; and at 
the close of the day, to reach home was a task of infi- 
nite difficulty. My next employment was weeding 
wheat, and leading a single horse at harrowing barley. 
Hoeing pease followed ; and hence I arrived at the 
honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the 
team, and holding the plough.' 

William's love of gardening, which remained with 
him through life, showed itself early. When six years 
old— 

( I climbed up the side of a steep sand-rock [doubt- 



COBBETT' S CHILDHOOD. 67 

less this one behind the house], and there scooped me 
out a plot of four feet square to make me a garden, and 
the soil for which I carried up in the bosom of my little 
blue smock-frock.' 

One sees clearly the sturdy, ruddy, whitish-haired 
little rustic, with twinkling grey eyes, in his blue smock 
and hob-nailed shoes, hoeing pease, scaring the rooks, 
rolling down a sand-bank with his brothers, now and 
again running away from his work to follow the hounds, 
with the certainty of losing his dinner, and the proba- 
bility of being f basted ' on his return ; and on winter 
evenings learning from his father the arts of readino; 
and writing. 

' 1 have some faint recollection of ^oiiis; to school to 
an old woman, who, I believe, did not succeed in learn- 
ing me my letters. . . . [Cobbett sticks to the old 
form — learning me my letters.] As to politics, Ave 
were like the rest of the country people in England ; 
that is to say, we neither knew nor thought anything 
about the matter. The shouts of victory or the 
murmurs of a defeat would now and then break in 
upon our tranquillity for a moment ; but I do not ever 
remember having seen a newspaper in my father's 
house.' 

The American war, however, gradually took hold of 
the attention even of country-folk. George Cobbett 
was a partisan of the Americans, and had many a dis- 
pute on the subject, over a pot of good ale, with a 
shrewd old Scotchman, the gardener of a nobleman in 

F 2 



68 AT FAUN HAM. 

the neighbourhood. The boys, who were sometimes 
listeners to these discussions, always thought their 
father right — e There was but one wise man in the 
world, and that one was our father. 5 

Let us now into the c Jolly Farmer/ and drink a 
glass of the famous Farnham ale. It would seem that 
Cobbett's father not only farmed, but also kept a 
public-house here, but of this I am not quite sure. 
William, who is never tired of bragging of his father 
as a working farmer, is silent, so far as I know, as to 
the selling of ale. 

Alas ! they give us Windsor ale — have no Farnham. 
Why at so many places, even some that are widely 
noted for brewing, do they give you beer of some other 
town ? Intervention between producer and consumer 
(which Cobbett used to rail against, and which is vastly 
increased in our day) is at work in this matter too ; 
supporting at the cost of the community a far too 
numerous class of mere transmitters. One can hardly 
buy a fish, now-a-days, on the seashore, or a pound of 
butter in a country village, direct from a dairy. Before 
the article is allowed to reach your hands, several 
people, in addition to the producer, are determined to 
squeeze a profit out of it. 

( Yes,' the man said, i Cobbett was born in this 
house, in the room above the parlour.' The front part 
of the house remains nearly unaltered, but another set 
of rooms has been added at the back. The parlour, a 
low room with a beam across the ceiling, has an engrav- 



COBBETT'S BOYHOOD. 69 

ing of William Cobbett, Esq., M. P., over the fireplace. 
A corporal of the Military Train, from Aldershot 
camp, who was drinking beer, knew something of 
Cobbett's history, and was clear as to the number of 
his regiment (54th), which I had forgotten. 

Diligent a boy as William Cobbett was, and dutiful 
to his parents, he was always determined to see some- 
thing of the world outside of his parish. He ran away 
from home three times — to Kew, to Portsmouth, to 
London. The first escapade he described, fifty years 
after, in an address to Reformers, when he was candi- 
date for the city of Coventry in 1820 : — 

( At eleven years of age my employment was clipping 
of box-edsjinffs and weeding beds of flowers, in the 
garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the castle of 
Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of 
beautiful gardens ; and a gardener who had just come 
from the king's gardens at Kew, gave such a description 
of them as made me instantly resolve to work in these 
gardens.' 

Next morning, accordingly, the boy walked off, and 
towards the evening of a day in June reached Rich- 
mond with threepence in his pocket. 

6 1 was trudging through Richmond, in my blue 
smock-frock and my red garters tied under my knees, 
when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book 
in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was 
written e Tale of a Tub — price threepence.' The title 
was so odd that my curiosity was excited.' 



70 AT FARNHAM. 

Instead of supper, he bought the little book, and 
carried it off to the shady side of a haystack: — 

( It was something so new to my mind, that though 
I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted 
me beyond description ; and it produced what I have 
always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read 
on till it was dark without any thought about supper or 
bed. When I could see no longer, I put my little 
book in my pocket, and tumbled down by the side of 
the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens 
awakened me in the morning ; when off I started to 
Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of my 
dress, the simplicity of my manners, my confident and 
lively air, and doubtless his own compassion besides, 
induced the gardener, who was a Scotsman, I remember, 
to give me victuals, find me lodging, and set me to 
work.' 

One day — 

' The present king [George IV., then a boy of about 
the same age as little Cobbett] and two of his brothers 
laughed at the oddness of my dress, while I was sweep- 
ing the grass-plot around the foot of the pagoda.' 

This queer little book, < The Tale of a Tub,' was 
mainly composed within a couple of miles of Farnham, 
some eighty years before little William walked to Kew. 

At the age of 20, Cobbett went on board the 
Pegasus man-of-war, at Spithead, and offered himself 
for the navy, but Captain Berkeley thought fit to refuse 
his request. Next year, one May-day, the young 



SERGEANT-MAJOR COBBETT. 71 

man, drest in his holiday clothes, was on his way to 
Guildford fair. He was at foot of a hill, and the 
London stage-coach came down towards him at a merry 
rate. 

6 The notion of going to London never entered my 
mind till this very moment, yet the step was completely 
determined on before the coach came to the spot where 
I stood. Up I got, and was in London about nine 
o'clock in the evening.' 

He had but half a crown left. One of the passen- 
gers who knew the lad's father, after vainly trying to 
persuade young Cobbett to return to Farnham, pro- 
cured him employment in a lawyer's office at Gray's 
Inn — a detestable dungeon, in which he worked at 
6 quill-driving ' for about eight months. 

Walking one Sunday in St. James' Park, he saw an 
advertisement, e To Spirited Young Men,' went down 
to Chatham, enlisted, remained a year in garrison, 
giving his leisure-time to reading, and was then shipped 
off to Nova Scotia to join his regiment ; where, being 
intelligent, well-conducted, and indefatigably hard- 
working, he rose with unusual speed to the rank of 
sergeant-major. 

In person, he was tall, burly, ruddy, with obstinate 
mouth and jaw, and shrewd small grey eyes ; on the 
whole, with a true, downright, positive, good-humoured 
John Bull aspect. 

When he first saw his wife, she was only thirteen 
years old. She was the daughter of a sergeant-major 



72 AT FARNHAM. 

in the artillery, and William Cobbett was sergeant- 
major (perhaps the youngest in the army) of a regiment 
of foot, both stationed in forts near the city of St. 
John, New Brunswick. 

f I sat in the same room with her for about an hour, 
in company with others, and I made up my mind that 
she was the very girl for me. That I thought her 
beautiful is certain, for that I had always said should 
be an indispensable qualification; but I saw in her 
what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct of 
which I have said so much, and which has been by far 
the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of 
winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep on 
the ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my 
habit, when I had done my morning's writing [he rose 
at four o'clock], to go out at break of day to take a 
walk on a hill, at the foot of which our barracks lay. 
In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I 
liad, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two 
young men to join me in my walk ; and our road lay 
by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly 
light, but she was out on the snow scrubbing out a 
washing-tub. " That's the girl for me," said I, when 
we had got out of her hearing.' 

They were engaged ; but, after a time, the artillery 
went to England, and she along with them. 

Cobbett had saved 150/., and this he sent to his 
* little brunette ' before she sailed, desiring her not to 
spare the money, but buy herself good clothes and live 



COBBETT 'S MARRIAGE. 73 

without hard work. It was four long years after this 
when Cobbett's regiment returned to England, and 

6 I found,' he says, ( my little girl a servant of all 
work (and hard work it was) at five pounds a year, in 
the house of a Captain Brissac; and, without hardly 
saying a word about the matter, she put into my hands 
the whole of my hundred and fifty pounds unbroken.' 
Cobbett on his part had been equally faithful ; though 
with an episode — of friendship on his side, and a be- 
ginning of love on the other — between him and a 
farmer's beautiful daughter in JSTew Brunswick, which 
would have been dangerous to a man of weaker will 
and principle. He tells this story delightfully in the 
e Advice to Youno; Men.' 

The sergeant-major, now thirty years old, obtained 
his discharge (this was in 1792) and immediately ac- 
cused four officers of his regiment of embezzlement 
and keeping false accounts. A court-martial was 
granted, but on the day of trial no accuser appeared. 
Cobbett had gone to France with his new-married 
wife. Thence, after six months, they sailed to America. 
His heat of temper, I should guess, along with a real 
conviction of being in the right, made him put in the 
accusation ; and his shrewdness showed him, after- 
wards, the difficulty of sustaining it ; and so, being but 
a retired sergeant-major without advisers or backers, 
or any confidence in the powers that were, he thought 
the best plan was to remove himself. In 1794, Cobbett, 
then in Philadelphia, began authorship by writing 



74 AT FARNIIAM. 

certain pamphlets under the signature of Peter Por- 
cupine. These were violently anti-democratic, opposed 
to all the views then popular in France and America, 
and made a great noise. Then, as all through his 
career, he delighted in opposing and attacking ; and 
the title of one of these pamphlets, ' A Kick for a Bite' 
(by no means i A Kiss for a Blow '), truly indicates his 
manner of carrying on a controversy. Cobbett after- 
wards opened a bookseller's shop in Second Street. He 
was recommended not to expose anything in his window 
that might provoke the populace. 

i I saw the danger ; but also saw that I must, at 
once, set all danger at defiance, or live in everlasting 
subjection to the prejudices and caprice of the demo- 
cratical mob.' 

When he took down his shutters, the window of the 
new shop was seen to be filled with portraits of royal 
and aristocratic personages, George III. in a prominent 
position and ' every picture that I thought likely to 
excite rage in the enemies of Great Britain.' The 
bold bookseller was attacked in newspapers and pam- 
phlets, and by threatening letters, but his shop and 
person remained without scathe. 

At this time, the first of many suits for libel was 
brought against Cobbett by the Spanish minister for 
an attack upon himself and his royal master in Por- 
cupine } s Gazette ; this was followed by an action on 
the part of one Dr. Rush, who treated yellow fever 



COBBETT AS JOURNALIST. 75- 

by bleeding, and whom Porcupine called e Sangrado ' 
and ( quack ' — probably with truth. But in this case 
Cobbett was fined 5,000 dollars and costs, and ( sold 
up ' by the sheriff. 

Soon after, he returned to England, already noted 
as a journalist, and set up in London a daily paper,. 
The Porcupine. This soon came to a stop ; and then 
began in 1802 the famous Political Register, which 
appeared, first fortnightly, then weekly, and continued, 
almost without a break, during more than thirty years. 

At first, Cobbett was a warm anti-Napoleonist, 
partisan of Pitt, and defender of aristocratic institu- 
tions. At the Peace of Amiens he refused to light up 
his windows in Pall Mall (where his shop was), and 
had them smashed by the mob. Six persons were con- 
victed for taking share in this outrage ; the jury 
recommended them to mercy, and the prisoners' coun- 
sel asked Mr. Cobbett if he would join in the recom- 
mendation ? ( Certainly not, sir,' was the reply, ( I came 
here to ask for justice, and not for mercy.' 

In the early volumes of the ' Register ' some of the 
most amusing things are Cobbett's violent attacks on 
Sheridan, and also his denunciations of the study of 
Greek and Latin as f worse than useless,' his ire having 
been roused by the frequent employment of the phrase 
uti possidetis in some of the parliamentary debates. 
Cobbett had his own notions of ' culture ; ' he never 
regretted the early narrowness of his education as a. 



76 AT FARNHAM. 

farmer's boy, but vaunted it to be the very best in the 
world. Without this kind of education, or something 
very much like it, — 

( I should have been at this day ' (he says in c Rural 
Rides ') i as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any 
of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Win- 
chester and Westminster schools, or from any of those 
dens of dunces called colleges and universities.' 

Here, after Warton and Keats, we have a distinct 
third variety of the writing man. As to poetry and 
philosophy and art, Cobbett sincerely despised them. 
His ignorance of all that is highest in literature was 
immense, and he was immensely proud of it. The 
broad-shouldered, beetle-browed, shrewd, indefatigable, 
self-esteeming, pugnacious, obstinate man, unlearned 
and unimaginative, crammed with prejudices and per- 
sonal likings and dislikings, looked upon his own 
practical common sense as the final standard of every- 
thing in heaven and earth. He was in a good 
many ways like Walter Savage Landor, minus the 
culture. 

When he set up the 'Register,' Cobbett was 
about forty years old, and he soon became a 
political power in the kingdom, and a thorn, or a 
whole bush of thorns, in the side of the ministry — of 
every ministry in turn. Pie was never quiet for a day, 
always fighting twenty people at a time, and knocking 
them down in succession with his cudgel, like Master 
Punch. In 1803 he came under two fines of 5001. 



THE POLITICAL REGISTER. 77 

each for libels on members of the Irish Government. 
Having begun as a partisan of Pitt, he changed round 
(it was said under the effect of a personal slight), at- 
tacked Pitt violently, and his funding system ; backed 
Sir Francis Burdett, and became recognised as one of 
the leading i Radicals.' In 1810, for an article on the 
flogging of two militiamen at Ely, he was prosecuted 
by the Crown, fined 1,0007., and sent to prison for two 
years. The 'Register' for July 14th is dated from 
f Newgate ; ' and the sturdy man is as full of courage 
and fight as ever. 

* This work' (he says), e of which I now begin the 
Eighteenth Volume, has had nothing to support it but 
its own merits. Not a pound, not even a pound in 
paper money, was ever expended in advertising it. It 
came up like a grain of mustard, and like a grain 
of mustard-seed it has spread over the whole civilised 
world. And why has it spread more than other pub- 
lications of the same kind ? There have not been 
wanting imitations of it. There have been some 
dozens of them, I believe : same size, same form, 
same type, same heads of matter, same title — all but 
the word expressing my name. How many efforts 
have been made to tempt the public away from me, 
while not one attempt has been made by me to prevent 
it ! Yet all have failed. The changeling has been 
discovered, and the wretched adventurers have then 
endeavoured to wreak their vengeance on me. They 
have sworn that I write badly ; that I publish nothing 



78 AT FARNHAM. 

but trash ; that I am both fool and knave. But still 
the readers hang on to me. One would think, as 
FalstafF says, that I had given them love powder. 
No ; but I have given them as great a rarity, and 
something full as attractive — namely, truth in clear 
language.' 

After his two years in prison, Cobbett emerged 
again, pugnacious and undaunted, though now fifty 
years old. He had a strong frame, perfect health, and 
a cheerful temperament. He rose early, took plenty of 
exercise, was very moderate in diet, eschewing wine 
and spirits, tea and coffee, and also vegetables (which 
he called e garden stuff'), and eating as little meat 
and bread as he could prevail on his teeth to be satis- 
fied with ; his drink beer, milk, and water. He was 
very fond of farming, which he understood well, and 
also of field sports, especially hunting. During the 
middle part of his life he occupied for some time a 
farm at Botley, in Hampshire. 

In his family life he was one of the most fortunate 
of men. 

c I have seven children ' (he wrote), ' the greater 
part of whom are fast approaching the state of young 
men and young women. I never struck one of them 
in anger in my life ; and I recollect only one single 
instance in which I have ever spoken to one of them 
in a really angry tone and manner. And when I had 
so done, it appeared as if my heart was gone out of 
my body. It was but once, and I hope it will never 



DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. 79 

be again. ... In my whole life I never spent one 
evening away from my own home, and without some 
part, at least, of my family, if I was not at a distance 
from that home.' 

His wife he never tired of praising. Some one 
lately told me, P. Walker, a little anecdote, belonging 
doubtless to the Botley time. A gentleman, who told 
the thing to my informant, was travelling to London 
inside the Southampton coach. There were four 
passengers, one a lady. Cobbett, whose name was 
in everybody's mouth, became the topic of con- 
versation, and was severely handled by the three 
gentlemen, probably Tories. ' I hear,' says one, ' that 
he is a tyrant at home, and beats his wife.' On which 
the lady, hitherto silent in her corner, said : ( Pardon 
me, sir, a kinder husband and father never breathed ; 
and I ought to know, for I'm his wife.' 

How far (if at all) can the domestic life of any 
public man be usefully considered in connection with 
his public life, as throwing light on the latter ? The 
domestic life seems to belong to the department of 
biography, as distinguishable from history. The fact 
of a man being in the common meaning a good husband, 
father, friend, or not good, seems in many cases to 
throw no light at all upon his character as a politician 
a soldier, an author. To sum up the total of a man, 
tracing the connection between his public and private 
life, is a task which, if at all fit to be attempted, it 



80 AT FARNHAM. 

would be vain to attempt without an extremely unusual 
command of all the facts. The rule that public men, 
as such, are to be judged by their public work, seems 
broadly, the sound one. But here is matter for an 
essay. 

Cobbett, in his political writings, continually praised 
his own domestic virtues. Whether or no this added 
much weight to his arguments on paper currency and 
rotten boroughs, it certainly made his writings more 
vivacious and readable. 

In 1816, Napoleon being finally settled, the British 
public began to talk loudly of Parliamentary Reform ; 
( Hampden Clubs ' were established in every part of 
the kingdom, muttering of i universal suffrage ' and 
( annual parliaments.' ' Cobbett's Register' had hitherto 
been a stamped paper, price a shilling and a half- 
penny ; he now published it unstamped and at the 
price of twopence. The circulation became enormous, 
and so in proportion did Cobbett's fame and influence. 
He had now the largest audience of any living writer, 
and by unfailing warmth and vigour of style, and 
reckless personality in abuse of his opponents, kept 
his public always attentive and amused. Next year 
the Government, alarmed by the state of the country, 
passed ( Six Acts ' of a repressive character, and sus- 
pended the right of habeas corpus. Cobbett, not 
wishing to be clapped in gaol without trial, suddenly 
moved off to America, where he remained till Novem- 
ber 1819. He resided most of the time in Long 



TOM PAINE'S BONES. 81 

Island, and he also travelled to acquire a knowledge 
of transatlantic farming. In the meantime he kept on 
sending over his e Register' for publication in England. 
When the repeal of the obnoxious law enabled him to 
return, he published e A Year's Residence in America.' 
He arrived at Liverpool in November 1819. When 
the custom-house officers examined his luggage, they 
opened a certain box, and to their surprise found that 
it contained human bones. i These, gentlemen,' said 
Cobbett, ( are the mortal remains of the immortal 
Thomas Paine ! ' This business of Paine's bones (in 
the earlier numbers of the ' Register ' he was f that 
miscreant Paine ') was a truly comical attempt on the 
part of an unimaginative elderly man to produce a 
dramatic effect in real life. It was an attempt in the 
French style, and it utterly failed in England. Cobbett 
made a kind of progress through the provincial towns 
up to London, where he was banqueted by his reform 
friends at the Crown and Anchor tavern. As to 
Paine's bones, he kept on speaking and writing about 
them for a time as a treasure of immense value. He 
proposed a public funeral, with e twenty waggon-loads 
of flowers ' to strew the way. A splendid monument 
was to be erected. Locks of the deceased patriot's 
hair were to be soldered into gold rings in Cobbett's 
own presence, and sold at a guinea each beyond the 
value of the ring. But the public only laughed, and 
some reported that Mr. Cobbett had been taken in by 
the Yankees, and had brought away the bones of an 

G 



82 AT FARNHAM. 

old nigger instead of those of his hero. Cobbett gave 
up talking of his anatomical treasure, and what became 
of it nobody knew. 

Cobbett at this time, and probably more or less all 
through his career, was embarrassed in his money 
matters. Insolvency was one cause of his flight to 
America, and he seems at that time to have repudiated 
;his debts on the ground of his having been unjustly 
treated by i society as a whole.' He was then made a 
bankrupt. He had not long returned, before, in a new 
action for libel, he was cast in 1,0007. damages. But 
neither debt nor obloquy, nor any of the numerous 
difficulties of his life, had any perceptible effect on the 
spirits and industry of this indomitable man. He seems 
to have borrowed money largely, and raised it by hook 
or by crook in ways utterly mysterious to ordinary men, 
who fear their butcher and baker. He blazed away in 
his c Register ' weekly (at this time violently attacking 
his former dlly, Burdett), and in the beginning of the 
year 1820 he offered himself as a candidate for the 
borough of Coventry, but was defeated. In Queen 
Caroline's case he took the queen's side with his usual 
vehemence. In 1822, his 'Register' for August 17th 
is addressed to Joseph Swan (a prisoner in Chester jail 
for some political offence), and begins — 

' Castlereagh has cut his own throat, and is dead. 
X*et the sound reach you in the depth of your dungeon, 
and let it convey consolation to your suffering soul.' 

Canning/ Property Robinson,' and e Parson Malthus,' 



COBBETTS OPINIONS. 83 

were, among many other public characters, objects of 
constant abuse in ' Cobbett's. Register ' at this time. He 
was incessant in vituperation of the borough-mongers 
and f tax-eaters ; ' they were the ( basest of mankind,' 
e vermin,' and even e devils.' He was against standing 
•armies, paper-money, and national debt ; modern shop- 
keeping and locomotion, modern London ( f the Wen ') 
and other overpeopled centres ; he abhorred Jews, 
Methodists, Quakers, Bishops, and Malthusians. His 
opinions usually stood on a rational foundation, but were 
built up into ill-balanced and grotesque edifices, lop- 
sided and uninhabitable. Take a specimen of his 
manner : — 

' There is an c< Emigration Committee " sitting to 
devise the means of getting rid, not of the idlers, not 
of the pensioners, not of the dead-weight, not of the 
parsons (to " relieve " whom we have seen the poor 
labourers taxed to the tune of a million and a half of 
money), not of the soldiers : but to devise means of 
getting rid of these ivorking people, who are grudged 
even the miserable morsel that they get ! There is in 
the men calling themselves " English country gentle- 
men ' r something superlatively base. They are, I 
sincerely believe, the most cruel, the most unfeeling, 
the most brutally insolent; but I know, I can prove, 
I can safely take my oath, that they are the most base 
of all the creatures that God ever suffered to disgrace 
the human shape. The base wretches know well that 
the taxes amount to more than sixty millions a year, 

G 2 



84 AT FARNHAM. 

and that the poor-rates amount to about seven millions ; 
yet, while the cowardly reptiles never utter a word 
against the taxes, they are incessantly railing against 
the poor-rates, though it is (and they know it) the 
taxes that make the paupers.' 

The best thing in Cobbett (for which one must love 
him, amidst all his faults) is his hearty compassion and 
kindness for the working classes and the poor, and his 
unwearied efforts to improve their condition. His 
' Cottage Economy ' is an excellent book, containing,, 
among many other useful things, an explanation of how 
to prepare and use English wheaten straw for the ma- 
nufacture of hats, bonnets, &c., which has helped many 
a poor cottager in the struggle for a • living. One 
of his periodical publications is called ' The Poor Man's 
Friend,' and this phrase ought to be inscribed on his 
monument. Nothing made him more indignant than 
to see a rich tract of country, here tilled like a garden, 
there grazed by herds of fat oxen, the downs covered 
with sheep, the valleys yellow with corn, and to find 
on this teeming soil the labourers, and the labourers' 
wives and children, living from year's end to year's 
end on the barest subsistence, with no prospect to- 
wards the close of their hard life but the workhouse. 
It was Cobbett's fixed belief that all the country parts 
of England, including the villages and small towns, 
were far more populous some centuries ago, that is, in 
the times called ( medieval,' than they are to-day ; and 
as one evidence of this he points to the vast numbers 



COBBETT AS A SPEAKER. 85 

of cathedrals and churches, built in those good old 
times, which still exist all over the land. The English 
6 Reformation' was one of Cobbett's numerous objects 
of attack, and he wrote a ( History ' of it, in which, 
as usual, his statements (seldom without a vein of 
strong sense and originality) were vitiated by ignor- 
ance and violence. 

In 1829-30, Cobbett, now approaching his 70th 
year, but as hale and vigorous as ever, went through 
a great part of England, chiefly on horseback, and gave 
political lectures in many towns and villages. His 
main topics were the villany of existing methods of 
taxation, and of the funding principle, and the effect 
of these on the farming interest ; also the ' ac- 
cursed' rotten boroughs, and the necessity of Parlia- 
mentary Reform. He was an easy and fluent speaker, 
self-possessed, shrewd and humorous, and spiced his 
discourses with plenty of amusing egotism and personal 
allusions to the men of the day. 

6 Though I never attempt,' he says, i to put forth 
that sort of stuff which the " intense " people on the 
other side of St. George's Channel call " eloquence," 
I bring out strings of very interesting facts ; I use 
pretty powerful arguments, and I hammer them down 
so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to pro- 
duce a lasting impression.' 

At last ( Reform ' was actually carried ; a reform 
which most of the peers, and all the bishops but one, 
thought almost equivalent to the downfall of the Eng- 



86 AT FARNHAM. 

lisli Constitution — a reform which now is so antiquated, 
superseded, and surpassed. And in the first Reform 
parliament, in 1832, William Cobbett, seventy years 
old, took his seat for Oldham. After this he made a 
political tour in Ireland, and was well received. In 
Parliament he was regular in attendance, and spoke 
not unfrequently, for the most part on agricultural 
questions, and with good sense and moderation. But 
his rat-like instinct of usino- his teeth on something or 
somebody, brought him again into trouble. Differing 
from Peel on the currency question, Cobbett took the 
violent and absurd step of moving for an address to the 
King, praying him to dismiss Sir Robert Peel from 
the Privy Council. Only three members voted in 
favour of Cobbett's motion, and his influence in the 
House was ruined. 

In these years Cobbett rented a place called Nor- 
mandy Farm, within a couple of miles of his native 
town of Farnham. When he could get away from 
( the Wen,' he lived with his wife and children in this 
plain farm-house among his barns and fields, in daily 
sight of the scenes of his infancy, and engaged in those 
rural occupations which he delighted in, as much as in 
his alternate business of fierce political controversy. 

In the middle of May 1835, Cobbett, though suffer- 
ing from sore throat, attended the House and spoke, 
almost inaudibly, in favour of a motion for the repeal 
of the malt-tax ; he grew worse, but again came to the 
House on the 25th, and spoke and voted on a motion 



DEATH OF COBBETT. 8 

on agricultural distress. Next morning (Tuesday) he 
went down to his farm, and felt better at first, but 
relapsed. 

6 On Sunday/ writes his son in the i Register ' of 
June 20th, ( he revived again, and on Monday gave us 
hope that he would yet be well. He talked feebly, but 
in the most collected and sprightly manner, upon poli- 
tics and farming ; wished for " four days' rain " for the 
Cobbett corn and the root crops ; and on Wednesday 
he could remain no longer shut up from fields, but de- 
sired to be carried round the farm, which being done,, 
he criticised the work that had been going on in his 
absence, and detected some little deviation from his- 
orders, with all the quickness that was so remarkable 
in him. On Wednesday night he grew more and more 
feeble, and was evidently sinking ; but he continued to 
answer with perfect clearness every qjiestion that was 
put to him. In the last half-hour his eyes became dim ; 
and at ten minutes after one p.m. he leaned back, closed 
them as if to sleep, and died without a gasp. He was 
seventy-three years old.' 

A portrait of the sturdy man's personal appearance 
in his later days, drawn by William Hazlitt, is life- 
like :— 

6 Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. 
The only time I ever saw him he seemed to me a very 
pleasant man, easy of access, affable, clear-headed, sim- 
ple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled 
in his speech, though some of his expressions were not 



88 AT FARNHAM. 

very qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has 
a good, sensible face, rather full, with little grey eyes, 
a hard square forehead, a ruddy complexion, with hair 
grey or powdered; and had on a scarlet broadcloth 
waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, 
as was the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last 
century, or as we see it in the pictures of members of 
parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did 
not think less favourably of him for seeing him.' 

The e Bush,' extending from the High Street towards 
the river-meadows, is a fine large old-fashioned inn, 
with modern comforts added. I was rather afraid of 
the waiter at first ; for his smart dress-coat, white 
necktie, handsomely arranged head of hair, and elegant 
manners, made him lit apparently to wait upon no one 
with less than 2,0007. a-year. But my dread wore off; 
he proved very civil, and the bill moderate. When I 
looked from my bedroom window in the morning, it 
was through a fringe of ivy leaves, on the bloom ot 
three great hawthorns, two pink, one white, the latter 
with an upright but spirally-twisted stem like a Lom- 
bardic pillar ; and a pretty garden of sward, flower- 
beds and shrubberies, where the landlord was lovingly 
at work with his hoe. 

He told me something of Cobbett, whom he had 
often seen. When Cobbett was a member of parlia- 
ment, and living at Normandy Farm (two or three 
miles from this town), did he mix with the neighbour- 
ing gentry ? Hardly at all, the landlord thought — he 



.ANECDOTES. 89 

went about his own affairs in his own way. He used 
to drive into Farnham in a carriage that looked as if 
the fowls had been roosting on it, and with a couple 
of farm-horses. Mr. Mcholls, formerly post-master, 
has some letters of Cobbett to him, which he shows to 
the curious. Cobbett was dissatisfied with the mode 
of delivery of his letters by the post-office, and insisted 
upon an alteration with his usual vehemence ; but find- 
ing that he was in the wrong, apologised to Mr. 
Nicholls, and used afterwards to send him frequent 
presents of fruit and vegetables from the farm. My 
landlord was at Cobbett's funeral, and saw Daniel 
O'Connell there. The funeral took place on the 27th 
of June, 1835, between two and three in the afternoon. 
The great Irish agitator did not follow the coffin into 
the church, but stood in the churchyard the while, 
amidst a circle of observers, to whom he put questions 
about the land, hops, wages. 

O'Connell and Cobbett were not unlike ; big, burly, 
blustering, able, noisy fellows, who made themselves 
heard far and wide. Each was fond of field sports ; 
fonder still of the turbulent excitement of political con- 
test. Each was powerful in vituperation, great in 
giving nicknames, full of ready coarse humour of a 
popular sort, merciless in antagonism, unscrupulous in 
invective ; and, moreover, they had more than once or 
twice exercised these gifts against each other. Each 
of the men in his family circle was respected and be- 
loved. In public life they were more like prizefighters 



90 AT FARNHAM. 

than anything else. They were pugnacious and power- 
ful, and found their arena in politics. 

After my conversation with the landlord, I went over 
to the church, a building of rubble-masonry, done-up 
of course, with some remains of good early work in the 
windows of the tower, which is high, square, and mas- 
sive. Close to the north porch, enclosed with iron 
railings, is Cobbett's tombstone, an ugly lump. The 
leading facts of his life are given in a simply-worded 
inscription on one side ; the other side bears record of 
his wife, Anne Cobbett, born at Woolwich, 1775, died 
in London, 1848. So wretchedly has the stonemason 
(or, as he calls himself, ' Thos. Milner, Sculptor, Lon- 
don, 1856') done his work, that the inscriptions are 
already almost illegible in parts. A headstone close 
by, within the railings, is inscribed with f George Cob- 
bett, died 1762,' — this was the old grandfather, the 
farm-labourer. While I was looking, an old farm- 
labourer came through the churchyard and paused 
beside me, — e Ay, that's Cobbett's grave, is that. I was 
at his funeral, myself, that I was : I saw O'Connell, 
he was an Irishman, he was : he stood just here, he 
did : I saw him myself, I could swear I did : ' a very 
stupid poor man, and not like George Cobbett, I fancy, 
though in the same rank of life. 

William Cobbett, the whitish-haired, ruddy-faced 
little grandson, in smock-frock, scaring birds, weeding, 
&c, who became a stalwart young sergeant-major,'a poli- 
tical writer, farmer, good family man, indefatigable and 



COBJBETTS GRAVE. 91 

world-famous journalist and public speaker, member of 
the House of Commons, was born in that brown-roofed 
low house just across the river ; and here, alongside 
the graves that he often ran amongst in his childhood, 
his own bones are now laid to rest. 

Leaving the churchyard, I walked past the ( Jolly 
Farmer,' and eastward from the town, in the direction 
of Crooksbury Hill, which I had seen from the Bishop's 
Park, like a lion couchant, with dark fir-trees for mane; 
and recalled that passage in Cobbett (one of the many 
which give us a tenderer feeling for his memory), 
where he describes his visit to Farnham in 1800, after 
returning from America. He was then thirty-eight 
years old. 

( When in about a month after my arrival in London 
I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was 
my surprise ! everything was become so pitifully small !' 
I had to cross in my post-chaise the long and dreary 
heath of Bagshot. Then, at the end of it, to mount a 
hill called Hungary Hill ; and from that hill I knew 
that I should look down into the beautiful and fertile 
vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impa- 
tience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes 
of my childhood ; for I had learnt before the death of 
my father and mother. There is a hill not far 
from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises 
up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is 
planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take 
the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. 



92 AT FARNHAM. 

This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. 
..." As high as Crooksbury Hill " meant, with us, 
the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first 
object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could 
not believe my eyes. Literally speaking, I for a 
moment thought the famous hill removed, and a little 
heap put in its stead ; for I had seen in New Bruns- 
wick a single rock, or hill of solid rock, ten times as 
big and four or five times as high ! The post-boy, 
going down-hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a 
few minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of 
which I could see the prodigious sandhill where I had 
begun my gardening works. What a nothing ! But 
now came rushing into my mind, all at once, my pretty 
little garden, my little blue smock frock, my little nailed 
shoes, my pretty pigeons, that I used to feed out of my 
hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle 
and tender-hearted and affectionate mother ! I has- 
tened back into the room. If I had looked a moment 
longer, I should have dropped.' 

However we may estimate Cobbett, his life was cer- 
tainly a happy one. How different from that of Robert 
Burns ! Peasants, both of them, born and bred ; 
vigorous in body and mind ; enjoying rural scenery ; 
sworn admirers of the fair sex ; eloquent, humorous, 
vehement, eagerly sympathetic with working people, 
especially the agriculturists ; yet utterly unlike in 
their aims, in their careers, and, as we must believe, in 
their inmost nature. The finest sensibility to impres- 



THE SURREY PLOUGHBOY. 93 

sions, that is the quality of a poet. Sensibility to 
pleasurable impressions, but also to painful, — which 
are apt to be most frequent in this work-a-clay world ; 
and the poetic nature feeling both in extreme is 
specially fain to shun these and to seek those. Hence 
temptations ; and, if there be a flaw in the will (whether 
the will be faculty or function) alas for the poet's chance 
of happiness ! I fear the New Brunswick farmer's 
daughter would have fared differently had her peace 
of mind been at Robert's mercy. The Surrey Plough- 
boy had constant good health and good spirits, a strong 
will (which the other sadly lacked), plenty of work and 
plenty of amusement, both such as he liked best. He 
never had, and never missed, the thrilling delights of 
his poor Ayrshire brother, wandering lonely by Mth- 
side, with murmured song, or crossing the moor to 
" Nannie, O," or feeling his heart swell on the field of 
Bannockburn. But Cobbett believed in himself, and 
produced visible effects on the world. He was thoroughly 
fortunate in his family circle. ( Cares ! ' he exclaims 
( c Advice to Young Men' ) — i what have I.had worthy 
of the name of cares ? ' He ended his career tranquilly 
at a full age, vigorous to the last, and after having 
attained the chief object of his ambition, a seat in a 
Reformed Parliament. 

As to his writings, their style is sturdy, straightfor- 
ward, clear, emphatic, but often clumsy, and almost 
always verbose. The violence, personality, and self- 
conceit sometimes pass all bounds. In spite of the 
perspicuity, vigour, and raciness of his pages, the 



94 AT FARNHAM. 

general effect upon the mind is very unsatisfactory. 
Strength and narrowness combined give one a peculiarly 
uncomfortable feeling, as of mental incarceration. 

Still, his f Rural Rides/ 'Cottage Economy/ ' Advice 
to Young Men/ are, in the main, thoroughly wholesome 
reading, manly and pure, with much sweetness ; often 
reminding one of the smell of new-turned earth mino-led 
with that of spring flowers. Many of his leading 
opinions — for example, those on Malthus, Public 
Credit, Taxation — appear to me perfectly sound. A 
favourite conviction of his was that ( England was at 
her zenith in the reign of Edward the Third ; ' and it is 
rather curious to find so different a man from Cobbett 
as Mr. Ruskin, telling us that in many respects f we 
have steadily declined' since about that time. 1 

Much work William Cobbett certainly did do, and 
with great effect on the e public opinion ' of England ; 
shoving on England with his bis; shoulder through 
thick and thin, more than perhaps any other one man, 
into what is called Reform. He was a Radical of the 
best type, in so far as he insisted upon truth, industry, 
frugality, obedience, love of goodness and simplicity, 
as the first things necessary, without which all politics 
are moonshine ; and, on the whole, he fairly carried 
his own doctrines into practice. 

The sun shone on flowery hedgerows as I turned 
down a byway leading to Moor Park, the Moor Park 
of Sir William Temple and Jonathan Swift. 

1 See Eagle's Nest, p. 230. 



95 



CHAPTER V. 

THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

The "Well of the Calf — Upper Lough — Irish Peers — Annals of Ulster— 
Enniskillen — Devenish — Lower Lough — Tully Castle — Belleek — The 
Cataract of Asaroe. 

Ehne has been defrauded of its just rank among 
rivers by the accidental prevalence of one word rather 
than another in speaking of it. Shannon, for all its 
chain of lakes, is still and everywhere called river ; 
Erne, though its waters run continuously and cease- 
lessly from source to sea, bears for the greater part of 
its journey the name of lough ; and lough or lake, 
thrice famous as some are, is a far lower title than 
river. The River Erne (for I would fain call it 
so as a whole) has a course of some seventy miles, 
from Lough Growna to Donegal Bay, and pours more 
fresh water into the sea than any other Irish stream 
except the Shannon. 

Lough Gowna, a lake of many creeks and twisted 
arms, greatest length some four miles, breadth perhaps 
half a mile, lies (something like a cuttle-fish on the 
map) not very far from the middle of Ireland, spread- 
ing and turning hither and thither among quiet fields 



96 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

and pastoral slopes, the boundary line of the counties 
Longford and Cavan invisibly dividing its clear water. 
Into this lake at one point of its shore, there belonging 
to the parish of Abbeylara, runs a rill or water-vein 
out of the old and famous well named Tubber Gowna 
(Tobar na Gamhnaigh), ( The Well of the Calf;' 1 
for out of this well, saith the legend, arose one day in 
ancient time a marvellous magical Calf, and as it gal- 
loped down the field the waters followed it, nor ceased 
to pursue until Calf and torrent plunged into the tide 
at Ballyshannon. The rising of a lake out of a well, 
usually with miraculous circumstances attending, is 
one of the commonest events in Irish legendary 
history. The lakes and rivers of the country were 
very important objects to the earliest dwellers in the 
island, affording the safest and pleasantest dwelling- 
places, in islands and lake-huts (cra?z?20^es), the readiest 
ways of moving, and an abundance of fish and fowl. 
Perennial spring-wells, too, were notable things in the 
rude and simple life of hunter and herd and savage- 
cottager, and easily acquired a character of sacredness. 
The natural my steriousness and beauty of living water, 
ever stimulating to the fancy, added to these associa- 
tions, and, with perhaps the memory of some remarkable 
inundations to help, soon produced stories enough of 
marvellous animals, wells that the sun should never be 
let shine upon, submerged cities, and imaginary origins 

1 Young cow, perhaps. 



THE UPPER LAKE. 97 

for lake and river. There is scarcely a noted lake in 
Ireland which has not some such legend. 

Out of the north-east corner of the Lake of the 
Calf runs a brisk stream, which is, and is called, 
the River Erne ; this flows some ten miles among 
the swelling green hills of Cavan, expands, inter- 
twining among islands and promontories, into Lough 
Oughter (Upper Lake), contracts again to ' River 
Erne' for another ten miles or twelve, carrying at 
Belturbet the dignity of an important stream, clear, 
rapid, and of good width ; and then, once more break- 
ing bounds, forms a watery labyrinth of countless creeks 
and winding channels, called Upper Lough Erne. 
From Belturbet to Belleek, which is four miles from 
Ballyshannon Harbour, the Erne is navigable by 
vessels of light draught. A canal eastward connects 
it with Lough Neagh, and thus with the Lagan and 
the Bann ; a canal westward links it to the Shannon. 
Ireland has extensive lines of internal communication 
by water ; but these liquid ways are little used, such 
work as they had to do in a poor country being now 
chiefly done by the roads of iron. 

Rich woods adorn the Earl of Erne's promontory and 
castle of Crum, nearly encircled by the beautiful 
windings of Upper Lough Erne. Near the more 
modern mansion are the ruins of the famous old castle 
of Crum, ' frontier fortress of the Protestants ' in the 
war of William and James. In the summer of 1689, 
while Derry was undergoing its 105 days' siege, the 

H 



98 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

Enniskilleners, under Gustavus Hamilton, held their 
own little town for William and Mary, and embar- 
rassed the Jacob eans as much as they could ; while at 
Crum, David Creighton (our Earl's ancestor), with his 
servants, tenants, and neighbours, stood stoutly to his 
defences. Lord Galmoy appeared before Crum ; having 
no cannon ready, he got two mock pieces made of tin 
and painted brown, caused them to be dragged up and 
placed in position with great show of labour, and then 
summoned the garrison to surrender. But he mistook 
the temper of the Fermanagh men, who soon made a 
sally, beat off his lordship's troops, and captured the 
pair of tin cannon. General Macarthy, lately made 
( Lord Mountcashel ' by James, now marched from Bel- 
turbet on Enniskillen with a force of several thousand 
men, and invested Crum on his way. After some 
skirmishes, the main body of Enniskilleners, under 
Worseley, went out against Macarthy (two thousand 
against five, it is said), who, leaving Crum, met them at 
Newtown-Butler. The Jacobeanswere entirely smashed 
to pieces, and some 2,000 of them slain, of whom about 
500 were pursued into the lake and there drowned, all 
but one man, who escaped by strong swimming, though 
many shots were fired at him. The General, fighting 
at the head of a few horsemen, was captured and 
carried into Enniskillen, severely wounded. This was 
on the 31st of July (O. S.), 1689. During the night 
following this day, the besiegers of Deny broke up 
their camp, and marched away disorderly, hearing pro- 



IRISH REPRESENTATIVE PEERS. 99 

bably next day of this new defeat of their side. The 
Enniskilleners had but twenty men killed. These 
English and Scottish { Undertakers ' (ancestors of most 
of the present leading and wealthy families of Ulster) 
were certainly a tough set of fellows, not ready to 
lightly relinquish their undertakings. 

The present Lord Erne is an active man of business, 
has extensive landed estates which he manages with 
care and skill, and is a large shareholder in Irish rail- 
ways ; he is moreover one of the twenty-eight repre- 
sentative peers of Ireland. The House of Lords 
(which is getting talked of nowadays — a dangerous 
position !) is already less of a purely ( hereditary ' 
institution than many people loosely take for granted, 
with its twenty-eight Irish and sixteen Scottish Peers 
elected for life, and its thirty-one Bishops ; not to 
speak of the legal, political, military, and other members 
raised for personal merit — for these also are not 
( hereditary ' legislators, and it may be added that their 
titles more frequently than others die with the original 
recipient : and these four classes of Peers make up 
perhaps a fourth, and the most active fourth, of the 
whole House of Lords. The principle of electing 
representative Peers for life seems at first sight very 
reasonable. While still entrusting a very high special 
privilege to the hands of a class of the commonwealth, 
it appears to connect therewith opportunities for the 
exercise of sound judgment and conscientious choice. 
And doubtless those men of rank, and they are not a 

H 2 



100 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

few, who have no fitness whatever for the duties of 
such a House, those who are likely to neglect them 
systematically, those also who bring positive discredit on 
their order, seldom seek, and let us hope, still seldomer 
obtain, an elective seat in that exalted Assembly. At 
the same time, it must be confessed that the practical 
result of the election of Irish Peers by members of 
their own order is that no Irish Peer, however dis- 
tinguished, experienced, influential, or capable, has the 
slightest chance of an elective seat in the House of 
Lords unless his politics be avowedly and indubitably 
of the least progressive, or rather the most anti-pro- 
gressive, type ; and in Scotland the case is very nearly 
the same. There is now, however, one Scottish 
Elected Peer of Liberal ideas. Might it not be better 
if the Crown had some part in the choice ? Thus, and 
by an infusion of 6 Life Peers,' in such manner and 
proportion a smight seem judicious, and a relegation 
of the Bishops to their dioceses and matters ecclesiastic 
(though it might perhaps be advisable for the present 
to leave one, say the Archbishop of Canterbury, to 
represent the Church in Parliament), a reformed Upper 
House might possibly be constituted without rupture 
or violence. 

But we are on Upper Lough Erne, and a score of 
grassy woody isles and green promontories with the 
blue mountain-tops that peer above them, glide and 
shift scarce noticed while our eye rests on this im- 
aginary House of Lords, vaguer than any cloud of the 



CHIEFTAINS AND PEERS. 101 

summer sky. A few miles below Crum we reach an 
island whose ancient name is Seanadh-Mic-Manus 
(pronounced i Shanat '), now by old-fashioned folk 
usually called Ballymacmanus, while others use the 
modern fancy name of c Belle-isle.' This ' Belle-isle/ 
by the way, is one of those names that indicate the 
perfect disregard and contempt of Irish archaeology and 
history which has always characterised the wealthier 
classes of Ireland. Old Catholic families, and here 
and there a liberal-minded Protestant, form the rare 
exceptions. 

In this island were written and compiled the l Annals 
of Ulster,' by Cathal Maguire, whose clan-name was 
Mac-Manus. He was sixth in descent from Manus, 
second son of Donn Maguire, who died 1302, first 
chief of Fermanagh of that family. From Bonn's 
eldest son, Gilla-Isa, descended Conor Maguire, second 
tf Baron of Enniskillen ' under the English regime, 
beheaded at Whitehall in 1642 for his part in the 
Irish insurrection of the preceding year. The senior 
representative of this chieftain family was in 1856 ' a 
common sailor.' 1 Several attempts of the English 
Government to transform the chieftains of Ulster into 
f Barons ' and tf Earls ' proved failures : the Saxonised 
nobles hankered after their old Keltic titles and rude 
supremacy ; English officials, courtiers, and adven- 
turers hankered after the lands of these absurd Irish- 

1 Note in the so-called Annals of the Four Masters (O'Donovan), iv. 
p. 1242. 



102 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

men, were not sorry when some neAv piece of f treason ' 
came to light, and took care to make the most of it. 
The new Kelto- Saxon titles quickly fell extinct, and 
various English and Scottish settlers became esta- 
blished as the territorial Lords of Ulster. 

Their titles of nobility mostly date from the last 
century, great number of them being traceable to the 
political exigencies of the latter years of the Irish 
Parliament. These are not ( Union Peers ' (a well- 
known phrase in Ireland), but penultimate and ante- 
penultimate, so to speak. Most of them have mounted 
rather rapidly to this or that higher step from the 
lowest one of Baron; for example, ' Baron Erne 1768, 
Yiscount Erne 1781, Earl of Erne 1789.' There used 
to be much promotion in the peerage ; nor could one 
object to this in principle, when properly managed, 
provided that a peer could be moved down as well as 
up ; but when the successor of the meritorious new 
Duke or Marquis proves to be a fop, a fool, a gambler, 
a knave, there appear to be no means of reducing him 
to the rank of Earl or Yiscount by way of punishment. 

To return to Cathal Maguire, cousin to The 
Maguire, then Chieftain of Fermanagh. He was born 
in 1438, resided in his island of Shanat, was a Biatach, 
i.e., official keeper of a House of Hospitality, to which 
purpose a portion of the tribe-lands was appropriated, 
a Canon-chorister of Armagh, Dean of Lough Erne, 
Parson of Inis-Caein in Lough Erne, and the repre- 
sentative of a bishop for fifteen years before his death. 



THE AXXALS OF ULSTER. 103 

We are told that ' he had several legitimate sons, 
though apparently in Holy Orders, 1 — a remark which 
opens up several curious questions. 

His annals (sometimes called f Annales Senatenses 5 ), 
written in mixed Irish and Latin, begin with Saint 
Patrick, and come down to the year of the writer's 
death ; thence continued by other hands to 1604. 
There are five MS. copies known, and the work is 
printed in Dr. O'Conor's ( Rerum Hibernicarum 
Scriptores Veteres.' 

The Annals were continued by Rury O'Cassidy, 
who thus entered the death of his predecessor at the 
pen {translation) : — 

( Anno Domini 1498. A great mournful news 
throughout all Erin this year, namely, the following : 
MacManus Maguire died this year, i.e., Cathal og 
\_ e( Cathal the younger "], the son of Cathal, &c. He 
was a Biatach, &c, [as stated] . . . He was a precious 
stone, a bright gem, a luminous star, a casket of 
wisdom ; a purified branch of the canons, and a foun- 
tain of charity, meekness, and mildness, a dove in 
purity of heart, and a turtledove in chastity ; the 
person to whom the learned, the poor, and the desti- 
tute of Erin were most thankful ; one who was full 
of grace and of wisdom in every science to the time 
of his death, in law, divinity, physic, and philosophy, 
and in all the Gaelic sciences ; and one who made, 

1 Dr. O'Donovan (a Catholic), in note to Annals of the Four 
Masters, a.d. 1498. 



104 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

gathered^ and collected this book from many other 
books. He died of the Galar breac [" spotted 
disease/' small-pox] on the tenth of the calends of the 
month of April, being Friday, in the sixtieth year of 
his age. And let every person who shall read and 
profit by this book pray for a blessing on the soul of 
MacManus.' 1 

These obituary notices, severally touching, but found 
vague when you read many of them, being cut upon a 
pattern, are extremely frequent in the Irish Annals. 

c Upper Lough Erne ' is some twelve miles long, 
and perhaps four wide at widest, measured into 
opposite bays : the scenery everywhere of nearly the 
same character — broken ranges of mountains forming 
the distant horizon to the westward, between which 
and the shore lie meadows, woods, and sylvan lawns ; 
on the other hand, a tract of cultivated country, with 
numerous mansions of gentry. Among soft islands, 
over ninety in count, the water winds through many 
intricate channels. 

Below Shanat the Erne again narrows to a definite 
river, makes several loops, gathers them together to 
glide by Lord Belmore's domain of Castle- Coole with 
its stately porticoed mansion of Portland stone and 
great beech-trees, then embraces with two liquid arms 
the fish-shaped island of Enniskillen, entirely built 
over with the town of that name ; beyond it, flowing 
1 O'Curry's Lectures, i. 85. 



ENNISKILLEN. 105 

single by the hill and ruined castle of Portora, and 
expanding into f Lower Lough Erne.' The town of 
Enniskillen, stretching from bridge to bridge and a 
little beyond each bridge, mainly in one long street of 
fair width which bends in. two or three places, dips into 
a hollow and rises again, is neatly built for an Irish 
town, and has a brisk and bustling look. It used in 
former years to be alive with mail-coaches ; now you 
travel by rail to or from Dublin, Belfast, Deny, or 
Buncloran, and on the Lower Lake there is a pretty 
and comfortable steamboat. In the eyes of all Ennis- 
killeners, Enniskillen is, next to Dublin, the most 
important place in Ireland. It is par excellence ( the 
Protestant Town,' inhabited and supported by a sturdy, 
downright, practical, and blunt-mannered race. 

You find much the same kind of folk northwards 
all the way to Derry, but it is in the farmers 
of Fermanagh that you have their characteristics 
in the strongest development. It is worth while 
to see a gathering of them at a cattle-fair, or after- 
wards at the market-inn, or railway-station, big, burly, 
surly, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, large-handed men, 
who drink deep draughts, swear great oaths, and 
relish a strong-flavoured joke, laughing hugely and 
calling each other by their Christian names. Neither 
roses nor toads seem to drop from their lips, but loads 
of hay, fat oxen, and cart-wheels. Much of Ulster is 
Scoto-Hibernian ; these people are more English 
than Scotch, and might be called the Yorkshiremen of 



106 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

Ulster. They are all Protestants, and most of them 
Orangemen. They are as tolerant of i a papist ' (any 
papist whomsoever) as a dog is of a rat. The Pro- 
testant landowners, millers, tradesmen, &c, of the 
region are of the same stuff, with class modifications; 
the descendants of the men who held Crum, and won 
the battle of Newtown-Butler. 

6 Enniskillen' is the English form of Innis-Kethleann, 
the Island of Kethlenn, wife of the famous gigantic 
warrior Balor, of the legendary period of Irish history. 
Whether Feara-Manach means Men of the Monks 
(from the sanctity of Devenish ?) or Men of the 
Marshes, or something else, appears doubtful. Erne 
received that name, say some in place of the older one 
Saimer, when Erna, the favourite waiting-woman of 
Meav, Queen of Connaught, was drowned therein ; 
while others derive it from the Ernai, who dwelt here- 
abouts, a sept of the Fir-Bolgs. 

The Chieftainship of Fermanagh rested in the 
Maguire family from the thirteenth century down 
to its extinction under English rule. We find 
in the Donegal Annals (usually but wrongly named 
6 of the Four Masters') the death of ' Donn Car- 
ragh Maguire, first lord of the Sil Uidhir in Fer- 
managh,' recorded under the year 1302. Of the 
Sil Uidhir, i. e., seed or progeny of Ivir, an ancient 
chief, there were several branch-families, of which the 
Mac Uidhers ( f Macivers ' — f Maguires ') thus took the 
lead. This first Chieftain Maguire is described as 



THE MAG U IRES OF FERMANAGH. 107 

c the best of all Ireland for hospitality, liberality, and 
prowess,' 1 but this description is so often used that it 
goes for little. It was in dispute whether this Donn 
Maguire or Donnell Roe MacCarthy of Desmond was 
the more excellent in i bounties and hospitalities;' 
but f Donn Maguire by the judgment of a certain 
learned Irish poet (who remained for a long space in 
the houses of the said Donn and Donnell covertly, in 
the habit of a karrogh or common gamester, to know 
which of them surpassed the other), was counted to 
excell Donnell in all good parts, as by this verse, 
made by the said poet, you may know ' — a verse to 
this effect, that Donnell MacCarthy's lands are far 
wider, but that Donn Maguire has always twice as 
many folk in his house. 2 The Maguires were usually 
inaugurated as chieftains on the top of Cuilcagh, that 
conspicuous mountain with a long horizontal sky-line, 
as of a gigantic barn or turf stack, which we see south- 
wards from various points on the Erne. In the lime- 
stone bowels of that mountain are the perennial springs 
of the River Shannon, definitely rising to light in a 
very deep round pool among the meadows below, called 
4 Shannon Pot,' whence flows the infant stream in a 
brisk clear little current. ( Maguire's country ' in- 
cluded the greater part of the shores and islands of 
the Upper and Lower Loughs Erne, and the chief- 
tain's main fortress was on Innis-Kethlenn, near the 

1 Annals of Clonmacnor, &c, a.d. 1302, translated by Mageoghan. 

2 Ibid. 



108 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

south-western end of the island, where a more modern 
though still venerably gray castle now stands. 

Cheerfully in the summer sunshine do those green 
rounded hills about Enniskillen (the stately edifice of 
Portora Royal School conspicuous on one of them) 
watch the calm waters of the labyrinthine lake, bright- 
glittering, or spreading soft reflections of sky and green 
slope, cornfield or meadow, or clump of heavy foliage, 
and enlivened with gliding sail-boats and the measured 
beat of oars. The roads and lanes near Enniskillen 
are more like England than Ireland; the fields bor- 
dered with hedgerows and tall trees, the cottages trim 
and white, with flowery porches and neat gardens. 
But let us step on board a sailing-boat at the west 
bridge, and slip down the water with a light summer 
breeze. We pass Portora Hill, and the ruins of 
Portora Castle, that once guarded the narrow en- 
trance of the channel — Port Or a, ' Port of Lamenta- 
tion,' they say, since from hereabout started most of 
the boats conveying funerals to Devenish. And now 
we glide into opener water, steering for the tall Round 
Tower which rises before us a little to the right. 

Devenish (Daimli-inis, ( Ox-Isle ') is a bare grassy 
island of some 1 50 statute acres, oval-shaped, rising in 
two gentle swells, on the eastern of which stands the 
ruined Priory, a building finished in 1449, and the 
Round Tower, which is one of the oldest, most perfect, 
and most shapely buildings of its class in Ireland. In 
the sixth century of the Christian era, the holy man 



DEVENISH. 109 

called Laisren, otherwise Molaise (mo, e my,' a prefix 
of endearment), the son of Nadfraech (for there was 
another Molaise, who died a.d. 638), established a 
monastery on this fertile Ox-Island — c Beatissimus 
Lasreanus ad aquilonalem partem Hibernise exivit, et 
construxit clarissimum monasterium in stagno Heme 
nomine Diamh-inis, quod sonat latine Bovis Insula.' l 
The abbot died, as recorded by the Donegal annalists 
on September 12, a.d. 563, and his body was buried 
on the island. This early Irish monastery was, in all 
probability, a rude collection of detached cells, each for 
one monk, with a church for common worship, and a 
round tower, serving at once for belfry, watch, and 
signal-tower, and place of refuge in case of sudden 
attack. Not many years ago among the ruins on 
Devenish stood some bits of ancient much-crumbled 
stonework, known as ( Molaise's House,' and looked 
upon as the oratory, and perhaps also the dwelling, of 
the saint himself; but through general neglect, and 
contempt in some, this relic is now obliterated. The 
establishment on Devenish was first an Augustinian 
Abbey ; subsequently it became a Priory of the Cul- 
dees, an obscure monastic order, which seems to have 
arisen in the eighth century, and to have been composed 
of secular canons, living in special communities ; their 
chief seat being Armagh. Five centuries later arose 
the Priory, whose pointed doorway and low square 

1 Life of St. Aldan, quoted by O'Donovan, Annals of the Four Masters, 
. p. 203 note. 



110 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

tower, shattered and ivied, stands solitary to-day among 
the weedy grass and tombstones old and recent, for 
the island is still a favourite burial-ground of the 
Catholics. 

Far over grass and water falls the shadow of 
the graceful Round Tower, built 1,300 years ago, if 
our antiquary 1 be right, and we trust him well. It 
tapers with fine proportion to the height of some 
seventy feet, perfect in every gray stone, and lifts its 
conical cap above a rich carved cornice (a decoration 
peculiar to this tower) dimly visible from below, with 
its four sculptured human faces, one looking to each 
cardinal point of the compass. Under each face is a 
window or opening ; and the several storeys of the 
tower, once floored across, are marked by other aper- 
tures, the lowest and largest being about twelve feet 
from the ground, into which the monks would scramble 
on occasion, and pull up the ladder after them. The 
stones are the brown sandstone of the neighbourhood, 
now hard and dark with time, cut nicely to the curve 
of the tower, and bonded with a very thin cement of 
fine mortar. A few years ago an elder-bush, planted 
by some bird, split and threatened to destroy the conical 
cap, built smoothly layer after layer till it diminishes 
to a single conical stone for pinnacle ; but the in- 
truding plant was at last removed, and the disturbed 
stones being replaced, the tower, save its floors and 
ladders, stands perfect now as on the first day that it 

1 George Petrie. 



THE LOWER LAKE. Ill, 

looked across Lough Erne, and sent abroad the voice 
of its bell — a little square tongueless bell (such as those 
of the time which are preserved in museums) struck 
probably with a wooden mallet. These bits of mossy 
weedy wall near the tower's base may be fragments of 
Laisren's antique little church. That here, in this 
grassy island, he lived and prayed and ruled his monks, 
died and was buried, so many centuries ago, is certain 
sure, and not uninteresting — little or nothing as we can 
gather now to distinguish the old saint from many 
another. 

Leaving Devenish, we open one blue reach after 
another, sailing past woody island after island — Trasna, 
Carr, Ferny, White, and Long Islands, Big Paris, and 
Little Paris, Inisdacairn ( tf of the Two Cairns '), Inis- 
free, Inis Davon, Inis Daony, Inis Garru ( f rough '), 
Islenamanfin ( f of the Fair Woman '), Horse Island, 
Hay Island, Goat Island, Owl Island, and luismac- 
saint (properly Inis moy samh, ' Island of the Plain of 
Sorrel'), which has given name to the large parish 
extending to Buncloran. In this island, amidst a tangle 
of old thorns and elder-trees, are an old rude stone 
cross and the ruins of the little church of St. Nennid, 
from whom is named the Hill of Knock- Ninny on the 
Upper Lake. More than 100 islands are scattered 
among the clear waters of the Lower Lake — Rabbit, 
Heron, Gull, Duck, Eagle, Hare Islands, and many 
another, small and large, from the Otter Rock to Boa 
Island (perhaps Island of the Botha, i. <?., bothies, 



112 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

booths, huts, being more inhabited than the rest), 
which has 1 } 300 acres of pasture. 

There is Boa Island, that long green ridge to the 
northward, as we now glide into the sea-like expanse 
of ' the Broad Lake,' seven miles wide at its widest, 
and in front of it stand the richly wooded Lusteamore 
and Lusteabeg. The scene is a very fine one ; behind 
the line of Boa rise confusedly the dark bare hills 
that surround the purgatorial Lough Derg, some six 
miles north of Lough Erne ; on the other, or southern 
shore, is the bold, almost precipitous, range of the 
Tura hills, with the steep rock of Poul-a-Phooha 
( f the Cave of the Fairy Horse') standing out of the 
thick green coppice that hangs on their lower slopes. 
On a promontory below stand the tall ivied ruins of 
Tully Castle, built by the Hume family, Scottish 
6 Undertakers.' 

We find from Pynnar's Survey of Ulster, in 1618— 
1 9, ( Sir John Humes ' (second son of Patrick, fifth 
Baron of Polwarth in Scotland) then in possession of 
3,500 acres hereabouts, with a ' bawn of lime and stone 
an hundred feet square, fourteen feet high, having four 
flankers for the defence. There are also a fair strong 
castle, fifty feet long and twenty-one feet broad,' and 
' a village near unto the bawn, in which are dwelling 
twenty-four families.' The castle (as may still be 
seen) was a fortified residence of the kind usually built 
by the wealthier Scottish Undertakers, a tall square 
keep, turreted at the angles, surrounded by a bawn or 
outer wall enclosing a courtyard. James I. had e set- 



TULLY CASTLE. 113 

tied ' six Ulster counties after a plan of his own. Conor 
Roe Maguire, Chief of Fermanagh, was allowed to 
retain a large tract, under grant from the Crown, and 
received the title of Baron of Enniskillen. But these 
new arrangements were unsatisfactory to all concerned. 
The second Baron, usually spoken of as ' Lord Ma- 
guire,' took part in the conspiracy of 1641, and was 
arrested in Dublin ; while his brother Rury headed the 
insurgents in Fermanagh. On Christmas-eve, Rury 
appeared in force before Tully Castle, in which a num- 
ber of the English and Scotch settlers of the vicinity, 
with their wives and children, had refuged. Sir John 
Hume himself was absent. A surrender beino; agreed 
upon, the people in the castle to be allowed safe con- 
duct to Monea or Enniskillen, the gate of Tully was 
opened to the wild soldiery of Rury Maguire. Lady 
Hume and her household were allowed to depart by 
boat ; but the others, to the number it is reported of 
fifteen men and sixty women and children were de- 
tained ; and next day, which was Christmas-day, these 
were all massacred, the castle being afterwards plun- 
dered and set on fire. Such, at least, is the story as 
one finds it. Similar transactions occurred (if the Pro- 
testant statements are correct) at Monea Castle on 
the other side of Lower Lough Erne, and at Lis- 
goole on the Upper Lake. 1 That some such things 

1 History of the Attempts of the Irish Papists to Extirpate the Protes- 
tants, &c, by Sir J. Temple, Master of the Eolls ; a violently prejudiced 
witness, however. See also ' P.' [Petrie] in Irish Penny Journal, i. p. 
177. 

I 



114 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

did happen I doubt not, but for the details I should be 
sorry to vouch. The insurrection quelled, and 
the last Lord Maguire beheaded at Whitehall, the 
Humes did not re-edify Tully, but built another 
mansion called Castle Hume nearer to Enniskillen. 
Sir Gustavus Hume died without male heir in 1731, 
and the Fermanagh estate passed, by the female line, 
to the Loftus family. The title of Baron Loftus 
(1785) was raised into Yiscount Loftus (1789), Earl 
of Ely 1794, Marquis of Ely 1800. The Loftus 
family's original settlement in Ireland was in the county 
Wexford, and their ( Ely ' is not an English but an 
Irish word. The present Marquis is a minor. His 
mansion shows its top over the thick woods between 
Tully and Enniskillen. 

Now come in view, on our right, the long promon- 
tories of Castle-Caldwell, well clothed with oak, ash, 
holly, sycamore, and birch, Breesie Hill rising beyond ; 
while on our left the blue chain of the Dartry moun- 
tains in Leitrim begins to dominate the south-western 
horizon. This is Roscor Bay, and now the water sud- 
denly narrows to river form, and bears us some few 
miles between low grassy slopes to the quay of Belleek, 
a steady rushing sound giving warning of the termina- 
tion of our voyage, and the commencement of the 
Rapids of the Erne, down which the river dashes, step 
after step, till it rolls into the tide over the falls of 
Bally shannon. At Belleek the first rush of the 
water turns the wheel of a porcelain manufactory, 



BELLEEK. 115 

n new enterprise founded on the presence of quartz 
and felspar in the neighbourhood, and very handsome 
cups and bowls it is producing. 

The upper waters, of which we are now taking leave, 
abound with salmon, trout, pike, bream, eels, and many 
other fish, but these four miles of swift river from Bel- 
leek to Ballyshannon, alternate pool and rapid, form 
the earthly paradise of the angler. The banks, here 
rocky, there of greensward, are dry, and pleasant 
to tread ; at every turn a new and cheerful scene pre- 
sents itself, wild woods and thickets, gray cliffs, grassy 
hills ; now and again some higher point commands one 
glimpse over another of the winding stream, with per- 
haps the sand hills and the blue line of the Atlantic 
beyond. Everywhere is heard the murmur of rushing 
waters, now at hand, where the current dashes from rock 
to rock, now remote, where it seethes and bubbles along 
some deep reach ; and harmonising with the voice of 
the river come the cooings of the wood-pigeons in the 
copse, and the occasional plash of a heavy fish. Even 
on hot days a cooler breath plays over the wide 
stream and fans on either brink the overhanging; 
boughs. One can love a river with an almost personal 
regard. 

The sadness of an emigrant about to leave this his 
native region perhaps for ever, is not unnaturally ex- 
pressed in a certain local ballad, familiar to many in 
these parts, entitled e The Winding Banks of Erne' — 

i 2 



116 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. 

of which here are two verses ; the words go to a sweet 
monotonous old Irish air : — ■ 

Farewell to every white cascade from the Harbour to Belleek, 
And every pool where fins may rest, and ivy-shaded creek ; 
The sloping fields, the lofty rocks, where ash and holly grow ; 
The one split yew-tree gazing on the earring flood below ; 
The Lough that winds through islands under Tura mountain green ; 
And Castle Caldwell's stretching woods, with tranquil bays between ; 
And Breesie Hill, and many a pond among the heath and fern,— 
For I must say adieu — adieu to the winding banks of Erne ! 

The thrush will call through Camlin groves the livelong summer day ; 
The water run by mossy cliff, and bank with wild-flowers gay ; 
The girls will bring their work and sing beneath a twisted thorn, 
Or stray with sweethearts down the path among the growing corn ; 
Along the river-side they go, where I have often been, — 
Oh, never shall I see again the days that I have seen. 
A thousand chances are to one I never may return, — 
Adieu to Ballyshannon, and the winding banks of Erne ! 

After running swiftly half a mile between bare 
slopes, the river finds its channel suddenly contracted 
to a narrow passage between two ledges of limestone, 
and down into this gully it sweeps, racing in long black 
ridges, leaping in amber curves, dashed into foam 
against hidden rocks in its bed, sending up from the 
boiling depths great gulching bubbles, and whirling into 
crannies and corners, raging continually, with a com- 
mingled roaring and hissing as of lions and serpents. 
After this tumultuous rush at ( Kathleen's Fall,' the 
Erne, spreading wide, runs at a steadier pace, but still 
rapidly, by the Avails of Ballyshannon and under the 
arches of the long old bridge, and 300 yards lower down 
makes its final plunge into the tidal waters of the Har- 



ASAROE WATERFALL. 117 

bour, over the Fall of Asaroe, otherwise called The 
Salmon Leap — thus lucidly described in an ancient 
Irish tale, c The Banquet of Dunagay and the Battle 
of Moira,' translated by John O'Donovan (Irish 
Archaeological Society, 1842): 'the clear- watered, 
snowy-foamed, ever-roaring, parti-coloured, bellowing, 
in-salmon-abounding, beautiful old torrent, whose cele- 
brated well-known name is the lofty-great, clear- landed, 
contentious, precipitate, loud-roaring, headstrong, rapid, 
salmon-ful, sea-monster-ful, varying, in-large-fish- 
abounding, rapid-flooded, furious-streamed, whirling, 
in-seal-abounding, royal and prosperous cataract of 
Eas Ruaidh.' 

Many a time and oft did my little boat shoot slant- 
ingly across thy foaming under-stream, old Waterfall ; 
many a time thy deep encircling pool engulfed me, 
plunging head-foremost from the dark rock. America 
certainly has ( a bigger thing ' in water, but did Nia- 
gara ever drown a king six centuries before Christ ? 



118 BALLYSHANNON. 



CHAPTER VI. 

BALLYSHANNON. 

Place and People — The Waterfall — King Hugh — The Salmon Fishery 
— Angling — Legend of Parthalon — Abbey of Asaroe — The Harbour. 

Bally shannon is a place of older note than Ennis- 
killen, but now a decayed and poverty-stricken town, 
with a population, mainly Keltic and Catholic, yearly 
diminishing by emigration. The situation of it, on 
either bank of the wide swift river, is as pleasant as 
need be, the streets on the north side climbing up a 
somewhat steep hill, and the aspect of the town pic- 
turesque from several distant points ; but once enter 
it, you find little that is attractive, except indeed 
a population who, poor and neglected as they are, have 
much vivacity and intelligence and very kindly man- 
ners. They are often meagre of limb and irregular in 
features, ill-drest usually, many of them barefooted ; 
a quick, shifty, pleasant, talkative, inaccurate, un- 
stable folk; as unlike the typical Enniskillener as 
possible. But in the population of this town there is 
some mixture, too, of the last-mentioned race. 

Ugly as most of the houses in Ballyshannon are (as 



THE SCENERY. '119 

in what Irish town are they not, whether prosperous 
or declining ?), there is something cheerful in your not 
feeling shut in \ glimpses of the river, the blue Dartry 
mountains, the harbour and its sandhills, being visible 
at many points as you traverse the ragged streets. The 
sanitary conditions, too, are much better than a stranger 
would guess, nature supplying brisk air, clean water, 
and a soil that soon absorbs the frequent rains. 

Both in salubrity, and in variety of interest, Bally- 
shannon far excels the trimmer and richer Enniskillen. 
The country round is in great part moory and rocky, with 
a multitude of lakes and tarns of all sizes, and many a 
rapid brook. Warm little vales, too, lie hidden here 
and there ; and the circles of ancient raths are frequent 
on the greener hills. From the higher points north- 
ward of the town, the long range of the Donegal 
mountains stands in view, a wavy blue line from Bar- 
nasmore to Slieve-League, that great ocean-clhT, an 
almost perpendicular precipice of 1,800 feet. South- 
ward, between the Dartry mountains (which have their 
name from the Clan Dartry, of whom the MacClancys 
were chiefs), the Erne and the sea, spreads a broken 
plain, almost treeless, of some fifteen miles by seven, 
Magh Kedne, ' the Plain of Treaty,' a locality of note 
in ancient Irish history, which includes much good 
pasture and arable land, and also some large tracts of 
bog. 

This, the south side of Ballyshannon, is for the 
most part a limestone country, but on the other side of 



120 BALLYSHANNON. 

the Erne begin those vast beds of e primary' rocks — 
granitic, gneissose, schistous, and micaceous, which are 
characteristic of this country, and the most extensive 
of the kind in Ireland. The limestone forms the 
greater part of the north bank, also, of this part of the 
River Erne, but at a short distance from the water's 
edge the primitive rocks appear, chiefly gneiss and 
mica-schist, occupying the whole of the moory, barren, 
and rocky district of Dhubally, Breesie, &c, and join- 
ing edge with the limestone formation at the pool below 
Asaroe Fall, of which the west bank is mica-schist, and 
the east bank encrinitic limestone. The limestone, es- 
pecially along the Bundoran shore, is remarkably rich 
in fossils. Indications of mineral wealth are abundant ; 
copper and lead ores have been found in many spots ; 
and mining has been attempted, but with inadequate 
means. A ship-canal from Belleek to the sea was also 
begun in the last century, one lock remaining as monu- 
ment of the scheme, and endeavours have since been 
made to improve the entrance to Ballyshannon Har- 
bour ; but none of these plans came to practical effect, 
and the business of the country has found itself other 
channels. Moreover, the military garrison, once nume- 
rous, is removed, the moneyed people have mostly gone 
to live in Dublin or elsewhere, and thus Ballyshannon 
is left in its corner poor and idle, with scarce anything 
but its grain market and its salmon fishery. There is 
also the winter eel-fishing, which produces largely in 
bulk, but the value of this is comparatively small. 



KING HUGH THE RED. 121 

The pool below the Fall is the place where most of 
the salmon are caught, and the scene there of a fine 
summer's evening, when the nets are at work, is lively 
and pleasant. Gray cliffs, verdant here and there with 
ivy and briar, half enclose this large deep pool. Let 
us sit on the close greensward, opposite the Cataract of 
King Hugh. The low amber torrent pours into the 
tide with continuous murmur, heard day and night, 
summer and winter, throughout the town, like the voice 
of the past. More than two thousand five hundred 
years ago, say the oldest histories, the sovereignty of 
Erin was committed to Aedh Ruadh (Red Hugh) son 
of Badharn, and to Dithorba son of Deman, and to 
Kimbaeth son of Fintan, who were the sons of three 
brothers ; and each took his turn to reign for seven 
years. Red Hugh's turn was first, and came round 
twice again, and towards the end of his third period of 
sovereignty, being then an old man, the king (attempt- 
ing, it would seem, to cross by one of the fords) was 
swept away and drowned in this river. He ' was 
buried in the mound over the margin of the cataract.' 1 
Hence Eas-Aedha-Ruaidh, pronounced As-a-roe, 
* Waterfall of Red Hugh.' This name was long sub- 
sequently applied to the Abbey, and was also often 
used as a general name for the locality. The name of 
6 Bally shannon ' is corrupt, both in the ( Bally' and the 
' Shannon' ; the Irish form is Bel-atha-Seanaigh, and 
the people call it, properly, e Bel-a-shanie.' Bel atha 

1 Donegal Annals, Anno Mundi 4518. 



122 BALLYSIIAXXOX. 

means literally e Mouth or Opening of the Ford, 5 but 
the compound seems to have no other significance than 
Ath by itself, and merely to signify 6 ford. 5 Sean 
means old (senex) ; but Seanaigh remains unexplained. 
Atli-seanaigh was a ford a little above the present 
bridge, and by this name the town and castle are 
usually designated in the Annals. 

But see, after all these centuries, King Hugh's Fall 
rolling down with low steady thunder, and sending 
whirls of sailing foam to run circling into the broad 
pool at our feet, its green depths full of quivering re- 
flexes of variegated cliff and summer evening sky. On 
the grassy banks are lounging groups and children at 
play, who point the finger now and again, as a salmon, 
c itself at once the arrow and the bow, 5 shoots up with 
a curve into sunlight from the bubbling abyss below 
the Fall, and straggling one moment on the edo;e of 
the swift-descending water wins his upward way, or is 
swept down like driftwood. Sometimes two spring at 
once and touch in air, sometimes an unlucky fish 
alights on that corner of rock, and has to struggle off 
as best he can. 

The salmon-boat is going to ( make a shot ; 5 let 
us watch the process from point to point. The 
word given, with deliberate speed the fishermen 
enter their boat, one rope being left with a man on 
shore ; the skipper stands up, the five large oars sweep 
together, the net is cast out fold after fold over the 
stern, and its corks bob in their wake ; they pass the 






THE DRAUGHT-NET. 123 

cliff-point, cross the current, glide close to the pouring- 
Fall — each man in turn shortening his oar — and again 
bend towards the starting-point their eccentric orbit, 
marked with floating corks. Now comes the tug ; the 
skipper gives his net-rope a turn round the sternpost,, 
the whole weight of the net is dragged at every pull* 
the rowers strain, the boat creaks, and advances inch 
by inch, till at last, the rope being suddenly cast off — 
c Give way, my boys ! ' — she darts forward and rounds 
nicely into her berth, the oars are slid over and project 
on one side, on the other the net is already being 
hauled in. At stem and at stern stands a fisherman, 
pulling determinately on the heavy main rope with its 
corks, twisting a hand in it, leaning back as it slowly 
yields, and shaking the wet festoons into the boat be- 
hind ; at the centre of the boat another stoops low over 
the gunwale, closing and lifting the two bottom-ropes 
or skunks, while a comrade beside him keeps plashing 
with balanced oar, to scare the fish from the opening ; 
at intermediate places others of the crew are gather- 
ing-in handfuls of meshes, and so, by degrees, the whole 
compass of the net swims up, and is absorbed into the 
boat. Three-fourths of it is aboard ; the oar no longer 
plashes, but is darted down and twirled with a turn of 
the wrist, for the salmon, if any, are close by, and too 
violent a commotion might urge them to overleap their 
corded prison. The tail once in, the net forms a bag, 
and all plashing ceases ; fish, perhaps, like other short- 
sighted creatures, congratulating themselves on the 



124 BALL YSHANNON. 

cessation of danger, just when it has become most im 
minent. The corks are in ; the people on the banks 
move to better places for seeing ; the fishermen are 
•all stooping, the meshes rise ; { Fish, or no fish ? ' 
say the people on the banks, and suddenly, if the luck 
be good, a great splashing churns up along the boat's 
side, spray flies into the men's faces, but they haul 
steadily, and after a short struggle the mass of scaly 
treasure climbs and rolls like a silver sur^e over 
the dipping gunwale. Flapping and splashing con- 
tinues at the bottom of the boat, but the men merely 
proceed to shift their net and refold it in the stem, 
ready for the next shot; and meanwhile glides up a 
small boat, known as ' the collector,' which receives 
the salmon just caught, and with them vanishes 
round a corner. The fishermen have now some sweet 
moments of repose ; but if the pool appears full of fish, 
their vacation is short. Besides daily wages, they receive 
an allowance proportioned to the number caught. 

In this fishery there are three large boats employed 
for the draught nets, each with a regular crew of 
seven men, and these fish the pool described and 
other good places in the tidal channel between the 
Fall and the main sea, from before break of summer 
clawn (when the tide serves) to twilight of summer 
evening. The total take may probably be averaged at 
500 salmon a day, during the latter half of the season 
(which closes in August); but as many as 2,000 have 
been taken in a dav, and above 400 in a single haul. 



THE FISH-HOUSE. ]25 

The average weight is nine pounds, but at times there 
is a plentiful run offish over fifteen. 

Round the corner, where the collector's boat disap 
peared, stands the fish-house, where piles of empty and 
full fish-coffins form a rude colonnade. An amphibious 
carpenter (half fisherman) is sawing, boring, and ham- 
mering, making and repairing ; and at its gable a tired 
old boat lies asleep on the grass, as her crew used some- 
times to lie asleep when she floated. Within the fish- 
house we inhale a curious combined aroma of fresh fish,, 
dried fish, turf and tobacco-smoke, cordage and tar ; a 
fire of two or three coals burns on the hearth ; in a 
corner beyond it is a man stretched in deep slumber, 
and near him a net-maker sits on the floor, adding mesh 
to mesh with rapidity. 

The collector touches the bank below ; the weighing 
scales are mopped ; one creel (a deep wicker basket) 
after another is swung off plodding shoulders, and sal- 
mon after salmon is lifted by a grasp near the tail and 
slid into the balance, where they lie passive that so 
lately cleft the river-deeps with quick fin and nervy 
tail ; though some still twitch, and the delicate hues 
of the water, gleaming and melting from the dark 
spotted back through purplish and pale green into 
silver and clouded white, are not yet obscured by ter- 
restrial handling. ' Six ; 109 pounds,' is booked by the 
clerk at his desk : and these are old fish, as may be 
inferred not only from their bulk but from the shape of 
their tails ; for the tail, which is much forked in the 



12G BALLYSHANNON. 

young salmon, becomes less and less so, from the cen- 
tral caudal rays growing faster than the rest, till, in 
the fourth year, its extreme edge is nearly or quite 
straight. A card is marked and nailed on its box, two 
men swing the salmon from the scales, a third mops 
them; and there they lie stretched, alternate heads 
and tails, with white bellies up, in their box (measuring 
about five feet by two, and one foot deep), which a 
couple of men immediately hook to a shoulder-pole, 
and trot off with to the ice-house close by. 

From hot sunshine into the ice-house is a sudden 
transition. One blear tallow candle is fastened there, 
like a weeping prisoner, to the wall of the crooked 
passage, through which you come to the bottom 
of a pit of frozen snow mixed with glassy lumps, 
in some corner of which a white bear might com- 
fortably lodge. We follow our salmon -box, rapidly 
shovelled full of ice and nailed down, towards daylight 
again, and feel the outer air striking on our faces like 
the breath of a stove. In half an hour, perhaps, this, 
with a pile of similar boxes, will be on its way to 
Liverpool, either direct in a swift-sailing smack, or 
by cart to some of the neighbouring steamer-ports, and 
so to Billingsgate and Bond Street and the West End 
dinner-tables. 

The salmon that evades the dangers of the ocean 
and the lower river, may either face the Fall, or choose 
the side stream that runs between an irregular rocky 
island and the shore. If the latter, he is a gone fish : 



THE SALMON-BOXES. 127 

he ascends the current, enters a minor rapid, pierces a 
very narrow strait — in reality, the entrance of a trap — 
and next finds his nose knocked against a wooden grat- 
ing, and can merely poke about amongst some fellow- 
prisoners until their hour shall come. The stream 
through the box is swift, and drifts him to the lower 
corners, and he cannot swim down it to seek the narrow 
opening (like an entering V opened at the angle), for 
the water would pour into his gills and drown him. 
No creature is absolute even in that element where 
strongest : the fish conquers the water, and the water 
rules the fish. 

The fishes' hour has struck — though the poor crea- 
tures know nothing of clocks. The men are, as they term 
it, ( robbing the boxes.' A hand-net on the end of a 
long pole sweeps down and rummages every nook, and 
by ones or twos, or when the box is full, by threes and 
fours, lifts the strong creatures struggling into air, and 
disgorges them on the causeway, or into a dry stone 
basin built for the purpose, where a knock on the nose 
with a short stick is their speedy quietus. 

Those lucky salmon that surmount the Fall by 
agility, or by advantage of a high tide, are free of the 
upper waters, which are carefully guarded from poach- 
ing by numerous 'water-keepers.' Here they gra- 
dually change colour, the females growing dark, the 
males golden orange, and are then called respectively 
'black fish 'and f red fish.' Their spawn is deposited 



128 BALLYSHANNON. 

in furrows or redds? which they make in the gravel 
w T ith their noses. This usually occurs in November, 
and about five months afterwards the fry appear in 
the shallows as inch-long fishes. They are now marked 
across with narrow patches of dusky gray, in common 
with the young of trout, Welsh charr, and some other 
fish ; but the salmon soon changes this coat. The 
similarity, however, remains long enough to supply, 
ground for discussions, especially as to the identity of 
the parr, or jznkin, with the young salmon; and on this 
the most experienced persons hold opposite opinions. 
The fry descend as spring advances, at first keeping in 
slack water, then venturing towards mid-stream. On 
meeting the tide they wait two or three days to grow 
used to the salt water, and then go direct to sea. There 
they get quit of certain small fresh-water parasites that 
cling to them, but only to be saddled with substitutes 
peculiar to the salt water ; and the reverse effect occurs 
on their return to the fresh. It is during the summer 
or autumn that they return to the estuary ; those that 
come in June weighing two to four pounds ; in July 
or August three to seven pounds — for their growth is 
chiefly in the sea and very rapid, their appetite being 
proportionately ravenous. They are believed to feed 
on sand-eels and other small fish and marine animals, 
and a good deal on the ova of crabs and lobsters — a 
rich diet, which in turn enhances their own flavour. 

1 Redd (from rid, riddance), a clearance; in this instance a place 
cleared. 



HABITS OF THE SALMON. 129 

While in the estuary, the salmon generally move up 
somewhat with the flood-tide, and retire with the ebb. 
They are supposed to return, in most instances, to 
their native rivers ; but if they have roved far in the 
ocean, the probability is that, after the season has 
arrived, they enter the nearest congenial stream. As a 
rule, the warmest rivers are said to have the earliest 
fisheries ; but there appear to be many exceptions to 
this, and the difference in time, and also in quality of 
fish, between fisheries only a few miles apart, is re- 
markable. 

Those i grilse ' or ( grawls ' (fish returning up for 
the first time) that escape the hazards their parents 
escaped, pursue in turn the same course ; and after 
spawning, head again for the sea as ( kelts ' or e keeves ; ' 
at which time they are unfit for table. They descend 
in the floods at the end of winter and beginning of 
spring, from pool to pool, and once in the sea, begin 
quickly to grow plump, firm, and weighty. Salmon 
can live wholly in fresh water, but poorer in size 
and quality. 

Once in the waters above the fall, the salmon, no 
longer legally assailable with physical force, become 
peculiarly subject to the seductive arts of the angler, 
and are tempted with monstrous flies of every glaring 
colour and unnatural shape ; for, in fly-tying, as in 
some other departments of the fine arts, it is found that 
the most catching article is not that which keeps 
closest to the modesty of nature. 

K 



130 BALLYSHANNON. 

From boat, wall, or field on the river- verge, often 
from the old bridge, the angler, wielding the heavy rod 
with both hands, bids his fly fall softly into a particular 
ripple or eddy, and swim np-stream with wavering 
motion. To the spectator not a brother of the craft, 
it seems slow work ; yet yonder rich idle man, to whom 
the world is an oyster ready opened, with a whole 
cruetful of relishes soliciting his hand, finds this the 
most desirable occupation for six summer weeks ; and 
yon other, among professional cares and toils in the 
city smoke, has comforted himself with memories and 
anticipations of such angling holidays as he is now 
enjoying. 

Your true angler will not interpose other pursuits ; 
he does not qualify his water ; soon and late he is at 
work amusing himself. Had you visited the river-side 
at half-past two this morning, you might, at that early 
hour, have observed the dim figure of an old gentleman 
thus engaged, his nightcap glimmering in the dawn ; 
and about 8 A.M., if the fish were rising, you might 
have seen the same old gentleman hastily consuming 
a mess of porridge at some rock or low wall, while his 
attendant kept the rod in vibration ; and evening dusk 
will perhaps find the veteran on duty, at this or another 
of his favourite { throws.' 

Angling, indeed, has attractions for people of every 
class and age, as there is plenty of evidence along the 
pools and rapids of the Erne on a favourable evening. 
The child dips his thread and crooked pin ; the lad, 



ANGLERS. 131 

with clumsy but serviceable home-made rod, and line 
woven of horse-hairs hazardously filched from the 
living tail, turns trouser above knee, and wades sturdily. 
The grave old pensioner handles his rod with military 
precision; the unshaven, sedentary shoemaker has 
thrown by the lapstone, spat out the piece of leather 
he was chewing, and twisted his apron to one side, to 
seek an hour's happiness by the margin of the cool 
flowing waters, while, above or below him, the comfort- 
able shopkeeper or householder swings his sober line 
from a station where wet feet are impossible. 

But most of these people, observe, are fishing for 
trout, some few for perch, bream, and the like ; none 
for salmon. That is a lofty privilege, requiring not 
only a government licence but permission from the 
lessee of the l several fishery,' which is accorded only 
to particular friends, or on payment of a smart sum ; 
and all the salmon caught must be given up, except 
two in the season for each angler. Angling for salmon 
is therefore chiefly the occupation of ( Nobs '■ — who 
from distant cities repair hither, donning waterproof 
boots, jackets with special pockets, and wide-awake 
hats embowered in artificial flies, engage an attendant, 
and fish, or pretend to fish, all day long, smoking 
continuous cigars. Old hands there are, though, such 
as our early-rising friend, who, in less ambitious rig, 
angle seriously and knowingly, and seldom suffer the 
rod to quit their own hands — unlike the more fickle 
amateur, who oft enjoys the indolent Havannah while 

K 2 



132 BALLYSHANNON. 

his man keeps the rod going, and who will even play 
chess with a comrade till either's proxy gives check to 
a salmon. 

The fish, being struck, rapidly dives or darts away ; 
then succeed the incidents of holding and giving out, 
wading, running sideways, stepping backwards, the 
brass wheel whirring, rod bent like a hoop, the last 
struggle, the gaff, the repose after victory, the calm 
triumph of the spring-balance and memorandum-book. 

The angler's attendant belongs to a peculiar class, 
which is small but unfailing. He lives near the river, 
and is usually a native of the locality, where it is very 
likely his father and grandfather before him lived their 
lives in the same element of sporting. He under- 
stands shooting and coursing, and is seasonably occupied 
therein ; but fishing is his stronghold. He perpetually 
ties flies ; for each lake, pool, river, rivulet, and every 
change of season, weather, and time of day, requires to 
be studied and suited in its peculiarities ; and, above 
all, the capricious fancy of the salmon — to-day ready 
to rush at something which yesterday he would not 
look at. Perhaps after the most renowned flies have 
been cast in vain, something tied hurriedly on the 
river-bank, with a new shade of colour in it, will be 
seized ere it can touch the water. The attendant 
therefore wears next his heart an old pocket-book 
stuffed with brilliant silk-threads, tinsel, gOld-twist, 
pig's wool variously dyed, feathers of the mallard, 
peacock, pheasant, American duck, guinea-hen; and 



INI&-SAIMER. 133 

declares to you that a fish will criticise a single fibre or 
bristle in the wing or body of the work of art submitted 
to his examination. 

Droll fellows many of these attendants are, with 
quaint stories and humours to lighten the tedious hours 
when fish are too dull or too wide-awake to be per- 
suaded ; and help to flavour the piscatory episode in 
the rich man's year. They are deeply versed in the 
characteristics of fish, and scarcely less so in those of 
the fishing rich man, between whose natures they seem 
to form a necessary middle term — their hands touched, 
now and again, with silvery traces of their contact with 
each. 

The salmon boat's last ( shot ' has been made for this 
evening, the big boats ride silent and deserted at their 
moorings, the fishermen have wended homewards by 
field-path or by water to their cottages. The tide is 
half-ebb, the windless sky holds a soft deep blue 
between the stars ; let us step into this punt and pull 
down the harbour, hearing ever 'the music of the 
water-fall ' sounding through the stillness. 

This one small island, a rock thinly coated with 
sward, bearing a single long low house, is Inis-Saimer, 
and owns a legendary fame stretching back centuries 
beyond even the time of Hugh, son of Badharn, who 
gave his name to the cataract. Do you remember 
Wordsworth's fine sonnet upon the influence of twi- 
light, or dim nightlight, in obliterating modernness 
from a landscape ? That era of the world in which 



134 BALLYSHANNON. 

Parthalon lived was 300 years after the Deluge, he 
being descended from Magog, son of Japhet, son of 
Noah. This Parthalon sailed from Greece, or, as some 
assert, from the Euxine Sea, with his wife, his three 
sons and their wives, and a body of soldiers ; and at 
last, in the month of May (the 14th of the moon, and 
a Tuesday, 1 if you are fond of precise information), 
they reached the mild and fertile island of thick woods 
wherein they resolved to stay, and which was after- 
wards called Eire, or Erin — that is to say, f western ' — 
and at length by the Saxons, e Eire-land,' Ireland. 
First they landed at Inverskene, now Kenmare, in 
Kerry (but all places were as yet lonely and nameless), 
and thence coasted northwards to the estuary of a 
rapid river — this river upon which we float. Here 
entering, they fixed their dwelling on the small island 
in mid-channel ; a clearly advantageous position ; close 
to the mainland but on every side protected by deep 
water : near the ocean, yet well sheltered ; the climate 
soft, fish and wild-fowl abundant; forests good for chase 
spreading to the water's edge, and, full in view, the 
copious cataract rolling with murmur, as to-night it 
rolls with murmur, into the salt creek, from far-spread- 
ing inland waters. "Here, and perhaps on the adjacent 
river-banks, dwelt Parthalon and his people ; and this 
was in the time of Abram and Lot. 

One day Parthalon was hunting through the forest 
where the Moy now is, and part of his household 

1 O'Flaherty's Ogygia, part 3, chap. ii. 



• PARTHALON. 135 

people were with him, and part were left behind in the 
river-island. He hunted up into a glen of the blue 
mountain-range beyond the plain, and there a messen- 
ger overtook him, whose message carried suspicion and 
jealousy; whereupon Parthalon turned hastily home- 
wards. So that valley was called Glen-eda, ( the Glen 
of Jealousy,' now Grlenade. When the chief stepped 
out of boat upon his island in the river, his wife 
received him kindly, and offered him a goblet of re- 
freshing drink ; but after approaching it to his mouth 
Parthalon took it down again, and, looking at her 
sternly, said, ' I perceive another man's breath upon 
my goblet.' To this his wife replied impudently, re- 
peating certain verses of a poet that it is unwise to 
shut up a cat along with a pan of cream, or a young 
man with a fair woman. At the same moment Saimer, 
the favourite greyhound of Parthalon, ran up fawning 
upon his master, who in his anger smote the dog and 
killed him. 

In the old narratives no more is said of Parthalon^ 
wife, but it is recorded that he buried his hound on 
the island, calling it Inis- Saimer, and so it is called to 
this day. Hence the river, too, was anciently called 
Saimer. The tidal part of tins river was also named 
Lough Bury, because Pury, the son of Parthalon, was 
drowned therein. 

After a time, Parthalon and his people moved 
away from this place to the eastern coast, to the 
high promontory of Howth ; and there Parthalon 



136 BALLYSHANNON. 

died, after being twenty years in Erin. In his time 
burst forth the lakes Conn and Mask, also Lough 
Laighlin, from the grave dug for his son Laigh- 
lin, and several other lakes burst forth, and four 
plains were cleared of forest. When 300 years had 
passed from the arrival of the Parthalonians, there 
came a pestilence among them ; 9,000 died" at Howth 
in one week, and at last there was not one left alive. 
Then Erin remained void of inhabitants for thirty 
years. 1 How was the record transmitted across this 
interval? Perhaps by inscriptions on stones and 
rocks, of the nature of that writing called ( Ogham ; ' 
but, moreover, the Parthalonians could hardly have 
lived three centuries in Erin without communication 
by sea with other inhabitants of the world. Some say 
that along with Parthalon came a number of giants, 
i plures gigantes ex stirpe Cham, viribus admirabiles, 
sed stolidi,' one of whom, named Puan, hid himself in 
a cave, and thus escaping the pestilence, lived till the 
time of Saint Patrick, a space of 2,400 years, told the 
saint many things of ancient times, and was baptized 
before death. This giant's lifetime (remarks one 
chronicler) i longius est bis quam aetas Mathusalem, 
sed nihil impossibile Deo.' 2 And this is a fair 
specimen of the very ancient legendary part of Irish 
history. 

1 Donegal Annals (wrongly called 'Annals of the Four Masters ') ; also 
Keating's History of Ireland. 

1 Annates TJihernice, Timotheus Dowling. (Irish Archseol. Soc. 1849.) 



ABBEY BAY. 137 

In later times there was a residence of the chieftains 
of Tirconnell on Inis-Saimer. A.D. 1184, the monas- 
tery of Asaroe e was granted to God and Saint Bernard 
by Flaherty O'Muldorry, Lord of Kinel-Connell, for 
the good of his soul;' 1 and in 1197 this O'Muldorry, 
a powerful and bloodthirsty warrior in his day, f died 
on Inis-Saimer on the second day of February, after 
long and patient suffering, in the thirtieth year of his 
reign and fifty-ninth of his life, and was interred at 
Drumhome with due honour.' 2 In the year 1200 the 
chieftainship came to the O'Donnell family, with 
whom it remained till Irish laws gave way to English. 
Neal Garv O'Donnell, Lord of Tirconnell in 1423, 
built the castle of Ballyshannon, near the ford above 
the present bridge, which castle, ( a long-desired 
place,' says Sir Henry Dockwra, was taken by Cap- 
tain Digges, one of Dockwra's officers, in the spring 
of 1602, being first battered and broken by a great 
gun. Only a bit of the wall of that castle remains, 
built into the wall of the grain-market, 

This creek on our right running up among the dim 
hills, is the Abbey Bay, round whose headland in old 
years rowed many a boat with supplies of salmon and 
eels for the monks' refectory, for there were both salmon 
and eel-weirs on the river appertaining to this Abbey. 
Some of the fishermen whom we saw at work this even- 
ing live under the shadow of the old walls, on a slope 
not far from the water. The building is now utterly 

1 Donegal Annals. 2 Ibid. 



138 BALLYSHANNON. 

ruined, the windows are shapeless gaps ; weeds and old 
ragged bushes grow in the aisle ; many of the stones 
are built into the walls of the fishermen's huts, or help to 
fence their scanty potato patches, while pieces of archi- 
volts, mullions, and other carved work, are more re- 
verently set for headstones in the neighbouring grave- 
yard, crowded with tombstones and mounds, ancient 
and recent — for these burial-grounds of old sanctity 
are much desired resting-places. Under rocky banks, 
grown with hawthorn and bramble, and through the 
arches of a rude little stone bridge, perhaps coeval 
with the monastery, a brook runs down to the harbour. 
The local features of the spot when seen by daylight, 
and a phase of feeling peculiarly characteristic of 
Ireland, are expressed together in a little ballad which 
may, perhaps, not unfitly be repeated as we drift on the 
current towards Coolnargit and the sandhills that guard 
the mouth of the Erne. 

Abbey Asaroe. 
G-ray, gray is Abbey Asaroe, by Ballyshannon town, 
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down ; 
The carven stones lie scatter'd in briar and nettle-bed ; 
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead. 
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide, 
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride ; 
The bore-tree l and the lightsome ash across the portal grow, 
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Asaroe. 

It looks beyond the harbour-stream to Grulban mountain blue ; 
It hears the voice of Erna's fall, — Atlantic breakers too ; 



1 ' Bore-tree,' a local or provincial name for the elder- tree (Sambiccus 
nigra). 



THE RUINS OF ASAROE. 139 

High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of oars 

Brings in the salmon-boat to haul a net upon the shores ; 

And this way to his home-creek, when the summer day is done, 

Slow pulls the weary fisherman across the setting sun ; 

While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage white below ; — 

But gray at every season is Abbey Asaroe. 

There stood one day a poor old man above its broken bridge ; 
He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain-ridge ; 
He turn'd his back on Sheegus Hill, and view'd with misty sight 
The abbey walls, the burial-ground with crosses ghostly white ; 
Under a weary weight of years he bow'd upon his staff, 
Perusing in the present time the former's epitaph ; 
For, gray and wasted like the walls, a figure full of woe, 
This man was of the blood of them who founded Asaroe. 

From Derry to Bundrowas Tower, Tirconnell broad was theirs ; 
Spearmen and plunder, bards and wine, and holy abbot's prayers. 
"With chanting always in the house which they had builded high 
To Grod and to Saint Bernard, — whereto they came to die. 
At worst, no workhouse grave for him ! the ruins of his race 
Shall rest among the ruin'd stones of this their saintly place. 
The fond old man was weeping ; and tremulous and slow 
Along the rough and crooked lane he crept from Asaroe. 

In this deep curve of the river, where it sweeps under 
sandhills before rushing seaward across the Bar, we rest 
on our oars under the starlight, and hear, now close at 
hand, the constant run and dash of waves on Tullan 
Strand, and under this the general basso of the Atlantic 
roaring along leagues of sandy and rocky shore. Out- 
side there, is broad Donegal Bay, a wilderness of 
heaving water, its northern and southern mountain- 
walls dimly visible in the summer night sky. On the 
left, beyond Tullan, haunt of sea-fowl, runs the rag- 
ged coast-line of black rock, — tufted with scurvy -grass 
and thrift, tide-worn into caves and £ fairy bridges,' and 



140 BALLYSHANNON. 

topped with downs of smooth thymy sward, — leading 
to the sands and the rock-creeks and pools of Bun- 
doran, delightful bathing-place. On the right, the 
fragment of Kilbarron Castle, once home of the 
O'Clerys, historians of the Clan Connell, and count- 
ing among them the chief of Irish annalists, hangs 
solitary on its cliff, bemurmured by ceaseless waves, 
the cormorants perched on the dark ledges waiting for 
daylight. But neither Bundoran nor Kilbarron is at 
present in view. 

We see before us the white surf where Erne loses 
itself in the great Atlantic water. The spark of the 
lighthouse on St. John's Point seems to beckon us sea- 
ward, but we go no farther. The tide flows ; and, half- 
drifting, half-rowing back by Asaroe and Inis-Saimer 
to Bally shannon Quay, we find the dash and roar of 
the ocean is gradually supplanted by the steadier sound 
of the waterfall. 



141 



CHAPTER VII. 

AT EXETER WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

High Street — Cathedral — Public Statues, &c. — Surrounding Landscape 
— The ' Philosophers ' — Scientific Truth and Spiritual Truth. 

The long narrow steep High Street of Exeter, with its 
lofty old houses hung to-day with flags of every size 
and colour, almost realises one's notion of a city of the 
middle ages en fete. The ghost of a fourteenth-century 
citizen would not perhaps see much change at first 
glance, though by-and-by he must begin to peer with 
wonder at the omnibuses and plate-glass shop- windows. 
The men's coats and hats would look dull and queer (a 
6 wide-awake ' might pass muster), but 1 don't know 
that the costumes of the comely Devon damsels who 
brighten the street with their white or blue skirts and 
tiny floral hats atop a mountain of chestnut or brown 
or golden hair, would, supposing him a ghost of some 
experience in his day, cause much astonishment. 
Women, in fact, were women in the fourteenth century 
(whatever they may become in the twentieth), fashions 
changed in bis time as they change in ours, and Master 
Ghost might probably recollect some phases of robe 



142 AT EXETER. 

and coiffure not much unlike that of the Cynthia of 
the minute. 

East and west, or nearly, runs the street for a mile 
and a half, rising narrow and very steep from the 
river, ascending more gradually past the projecting 
curved front (1593) of the Guildhall, widening above 
and branching into the country, bye-streets and narrow 
courts going off on either hand ; and one of these 
latter, on the right going up, bringing you briefly into 
the Cathedral Close, where through sparse elm trees 
of moderate size, peeps forth the antique bulk of grey 
stone, west porch rough with worn sculptures under the 
great west window, row of wide and close- set northern 
windows alike in size, unlike each from each in its 
rich ' geometric ' tracery, and two square low massy 
Norman towers, long ago pierced as transepts, standing 
midway the edifice. The Close is mainly of non- 
ecclesiastic appearance, f dis-established '-looking, bor- 
dered with hotels, a bank, and common dwelling-houses. 
But the worst is a new church, a big church, incredibly 
ugly, built cheek by jowl alongside that venerable 
west front. Words cannot express the disgust inspired 
by this pretentious monstrosity, its lumbering spire 
browbeating the solemn and ancient beauty of the 
cathedral. And what can be the good of it ? Here is 
a most beautiful church in perfect order, furnished 
with all due appliances, already six times too big for 
any possible congregation ; in which three or four 
separate sermons might be preached simultaneously, if 



UGLIFYING THE WORLD. 143 

that could be thought desirable ; and beside this, al- 
most touching it, you build up another church of the 
same worship, a costly and pretentious building, 
odiously unsightly in itself, and most damaging to its 
neighbour's beauty. 

What avails it to protest against the great guild of 
uglifiers who are busily at work on the surface of this 
poor old earth, destroying or disfiguring whatsoever 
beautiful thing they come near, setting up their 
abominations everywhere, to the injury of present and 
future mankind ? Little I fear ; yet there is some 
small satisfaction in speaking one's mind, and giving 
such people to know what certain others, however 
few, think of their works — of any work helping to 
permanently uglify the world. Such an evil may be 
sometimes absolutely unavoidable, like shaving a sick 
man's head or cutting his leg off, but the necessity 
ought to be clear and real, not, as so often, a pretended 
need generated in a compost of stupidity, weak desire 
of novelty, and some kind of low self-interest. Once 
more suffer this to be repeated, since men are con- 
tinually forgetting it : the world is not ours absolutely, 
or any part of it ; but only ours in trust. We have ' a 
user,' as the lawyers say, and that without prejudice to 
all others, born or to be born. Pray, how can mortal 
do, in a common way, worse turn to mankind than by 
permanently lessening the world's beauty, in landscape, 
in architecture, in dress, in (what is sure to go with the 
rest) manners, tastes, sympathies? An evil governor, 



144 AT EXETER. 

or the writer of a clever vile book, perhaps does worse, 
but that is not in a common way. To those who would 
care nothing, or rather prefer it, if the whole world 
were a model sewage-farm (deodorized at best), with 
towns of new bricken streets and stuccoed villas, 
churches and railway stations at proper intervals, as 
per contract, I have nothing to say, save to wish them 
Australia or Central America all to themselves, to 
build and live in after their own hearts, export bound- 
less wool and preserved beef, and become richer, fatter, 
and stupider year by year. 

The interior of the Cathedral, chiefly thirteenth and 
fourteenth-century work, is at once rich in effect and 
simple in plan; rows of clustered pillars supporting 
pointed arches, rows of wide windows of varied tracery, 
long line of vaulted roof, groined and bossed, all sym- 
metrically beautiful, a lovely coup oVceil from the west 
door — but with one huge blot, the lumbering bulk of 
the organ, like a gigantic chest of drawers, heaved up 
on the screen midway. Why is this organ imlike a 
peacock ? Because it delights the ear and tortures 
the eye. It ought to be transplanted to-morrow to 
one of the transepts. On the stone screen is painted 
a row of curious scripture-pieces, well preserved and 
harmonious in colour, six from the Old Testament, 
and seven from the New. The east window is bad 
perpendicular, but filled in with ancient stained glass 
of fine subdued colour ; the west window a geometric 
rose, but with petals of glaring modern glass. In the 



DOOM BOOK. 145 

Lady-Chapel ( c the ladies' chapel' I heard a visitor call 
it, so far is the famous word on its way to popular 
oblivion) and side-chapels, are many tombs, some ol 
them lately painted and gilded in true upholsterer 
fashion. The Chapter House, a stately vaulted room, 
contains a library of old books, and there I saw and 
handled the original i Doom Book' for Devon and Corn 
wall, its parchment leaves and black and red writing 
quite fresh to this day. Some clever fellow among the 
suffering Saxons invented the sensational name of 
Domesday Book for these reports, a phrase absurdly 
kept still in serious use ; for l Doom Book ' means 
neither more nor less than ( valuation book,' — f doom,' 
what is deemed — in this case what is deemed the value 
of people's landed properties throughout England. 

Southwards from Exeter Cathedral to the river, 
straggles a network of narrow slums, crossed by the 
wider South Street ; and over these crowded alleys 
the steep lower part of the High Street goes on arches, 
from which the downlook, especially at night, is pic- 
turesque enough. Here and there a quaint old house 
rewards the adventurous explorer ; and the ( White 
Hart ' in South Street, with its courtyard and galleries, 
is a charming bit of the Past, while its flowers and 
bright bar give good promise of present comfort. 
Beyond the Exe, an easy-flowing stream of some 
thirty yards wide, is a suburb, not legally part of the 
city, and above this rise the rich hills of grove and 
corn-field, by which Exeter is well-nigh encompassed ; 

L 



146 AT EXETER. 

seawards only, along the river's right shore, goes a 
stretch of flat pasture land, here and there embanked 
from the tide. The good old city combines the cha- 
racters of an inland and a seaport place. From most 
points of view the wide-sweeping circle of rich slopes 
is unbroken, and the great trees stand tall and straight, 
or mass their foliage ( in heavy peacefulness,' without 
any sign of conflict with sea-gales. Yet the salt tide 
is not far off; sailors and yachtsmen, cockles and fresh 
herrings, walk familiarly through her streets ; by help 
of a short canal the ocean-furrowing keels lie alongside 
her wharves ; and but a little way down, the river 
opens widely to ebb and flood, and all the incidents of 
sea-side life. 

Near as it is, the breath of the sea is not much 
felt in Exeter, unless perhaps when southerly or 
south-easterly winds are blowing. The air in the 
close streets during those sunshiny autumnal days that 
I was there, felt very heavy and stagnant, and was 
mingled morning and evening with a fog from the 
river. The roads and lanes, too, as usual in Devon, 
are thickly shut in with trees and hedgerows. Lover 
of antiquity as I am, I must own that the new and 
comparatively broad Queen Street, leading towards 
the railway station, is doubtless a very good thing 
for the public health. 

Between this and the High Street is a large mound 
or small hill, crowned with a public walk under lofty 
elms, called Xorthernhay (Jiedge, no doubt) and the 



STATUES. 147 

red-sandstone ruins of the ancient castle of Rougemont. 
These red stones of Red Hill were laid by the men of 
William Duke of Normandy and Conqueror of Eng- 
land, when Exeter had sullenly surrendered, after a 
fierce and bloody siege of eighteen days. You can 
enter the castle-yard through a postern, climb to its 
battlement and overlook the city, and descend to the 
High Street by the corner of a lofty gateway now 
wrapt in ivy, and shaded by a huge walnut-tree. 

' Eichmond ! — when last I was at Exeter, 
The mayor in courtesy showed me the castle, 
And called it — Eonge-mont : at which name I started ; 
Because a bard of Ireland told me once 
I should not live long after I saw Eichmond.' > 

In this castle-yard stands the County Assize Court, 
guarded by a statue of Earl Fortescue, thick-haired 
(or wigged ?), whiskered, aquiline, robed and gartered. 
He was 'Lord Lieutenant of Devon,' died 1861, and 
is here praised for a ( noble and generous character,' 
and ' unwearied diligence in the discharge of public 
duty ; ' conveying but little to a stranger's mind. 

On the grass-plot of Northernhay are two other 
modern statues, sightly enough : Thomas Dyke Ack- 
land (1861), a handsome man standing cloaked, motto 
'Prcesenti tibi maturos largimur honor es ^ and John 
Dinham, old man in chair, with large book open on his 
lap, the inscription speaking of ' Piety, integrity, 
charity,' &c. I confess I never heard of John Dinham 
before, and would fain have had some particulars. A 

1 King Bichard III., iv. 2. 
l 2 



148 AT EXETER. 

man's monument should carry on it a biography, brief, 
accurate, and pregnant, addressed to all comers. The 
motto here was a text from the Bible — ' The book of the 
law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt me- 
ditate thereon day and night, and then thou shalt make 
thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good 
success.' What kind of prosperity and success did 
the citizens of Exeter suppose to be meant in this 
sentence ? Something very tangible, I suspect, of a 
kind which by no means ( passeth all understanding.' 
A wealthy, diligent, shrewd, respectable, and also 
benevolent man, is a good solid figure of great worth 
in his place. I was satisfied, if not exhilarated, to see 
this memorial, which I took to belong to some such 
person, but somehow misliked its motto. 

Each of these three statues, in white marble, stands 
on a British pedestal of gray granite. The British 
pedestal, in which a noble simplicity is no doubt aimed 
at, is bare and rectangular, with meagre mouldings — a 
thing ill-proportioned in every part, thoroughly un- 
comfortable and mean. A harsh spiky railing round 
the Ackland pedestal enhances its ungainly appearance. 
Now there is no reason on earth why sculptors, if they 
know how, should not put their statues on pedestals of 
varied design, each, whether simple or rich, being 
decorative and delightful. Even a plain, four-cornered 
block of stone may be well or ill-proportioned in rela- 
tion to that which it supports, and to the general 



TEE LANDSCAPE. 149 

surroundings. It is true the sculptor does not always 
design the pedestal ; but he always ought to do so. 

Besides Northernhay there is a Southernhay, with 
good houses and shady trees, and also a Bonhay and a 
Shilhay in the suburbs. 

If you wish to see what the country round Exeter is 
like, go up the long narrow High Street, leaving the 
Castle-mound on your left hand, and the Cathedral- 
close on your right, and so along the wider street of 
St. Sidwell (properly Sativola, an obscure saint with 
an ugly church of Georgian architecture), till the road 
forks. Take the left-hand road, and again, at a 
turnpike, the left hand, and after a mile uphill a slope 
is reached, looking northward across the valley of the 
Exe, and a wide landscape of wonderful richness ; 
great hill-sides one behind another, loaded, when I saw 
them, with yellow harvest, dark with luxuriant groves 
and copses, the warm red ploughed fields here and 
there adding to the ripeness of the picture ; in front a 
white mansion (Sir Stafford Northcote's) in its woody 
park rising from the river ; granges and farmhouses 
scattered or clustered amid foliage ; the proud and 
wealthy vale stretching far away, crowned by a range 
of hills almost mountainous ; and, as we look, a running 
flag of white vapour shows where the North Devon 
railway has found its winding course. 

Retracing our steps to Exeter, we see the elms of 
Northernhay, a solid, straight- topped, and conspicuous 
grove, the two square towers of the Cathedral scarcely 



150 AT EXETER. 

rising above the surrounding roofs ; then down a steep 
hill and up a moderate ascent, and here we stand again 
in the High Street, bustling with human mortals and 
hung with brilliant flags. 

But why these flags ? Because the old city is in 
these days entertaining a distinguished guest, the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
and on corners and doorposts you see mysterious 
printed placards, ' Section A,' ( Section D,' and so on. 
Exeter is overflowing with learned men and pretty girls, 
hearty wholesome-looking Devon lasses, well grown, 
with complexions that seem nourished on rosy apples 
and clouted cream. 

The mathematical and physical philosophers, labelled 
A, meet in the Grammar School in the High Street ; 
the chemists, marked B, in the Albert Museum in 
Queen Street ; geologists (C) in the Temperance Hall 
in the outskirts ; the terrible biologists (D), with their 
Huxley, in the Episcopal Schools, in the shadow of a 
new church ; the geographers (E) in the still unfinished 
Victoria Hall (built to receive the Association) ; the 
economists and statisticians (F) in the Athenaeum 
lecture-room; and the mechanicians (G) in the school- 
room of St. John's Hospital, a charity for boys off the 
High Street. So dotted over the city, are seven little 
scientific parliaments sitting at once, and the ladies and 
idlers like myself (' associates ' for the nonce by virtue 
of a twenty-shilling green card) keep running about 
from one place to another, wherever is most promise of 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 151 

interest or amusement. For all the Athenians and 
strangers which were in Exeter spent their time in 
nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new 
thing. Parliaments D and E especially swarmed 
with chignons, and when a representative of ( the 
Coming Woman ' appeared on the platform in the 
former to read her paper on stamens and pistils, the 
scene was like a fashionable morning concert. In 
the same Episcopal school-house on another day 
occurred a still more exciting piece of business, science 
and theology pitted against each other as avowed an- 
tagonists. Three clergymen read papers against i the 
Darwinian Theory,' and were answered by the champion 
of science, when some pretty hard verbal hits were ex- 
changed. On the whole perhaps neither the audience 
nor the world was much wiser for these discussions. 
But that such encounters are now publicly taking 
place everywhere is a fact of the utmost interest, 
containing in it, as some think, the germ of an almost 
unparalleled social revolution. 

Altogether, at this Exeter gathering, it seemed to 
me that I was present at a review of part of the army 
of the great modern power, Scientific Rationalism, the 
one antagonist ready to take the field against that 
ancient and powerful organisation which some call 
Catholicism and others Popery. At present it is an 
unequal contest. The old army is still the stronger. 
Not to speak of its elaborate lines, entrenchments, 
forts, and citadels, its discipline and watchfulness, it 



152 AT EXETER. 

keeps on its side the most constant and powerful forces 
of the human soul, love and fear, awe and reverence, 
enthusiasm and devotion, sense of duty, of purity, of 
rapture, of mystery, of ignorance, of the infinite. 
Science, unallied with poetry and piety, will never 
rule over the human race, nor even subdue its old and 
by some despised antagonist. My own private hope, 
I might say faith, is, that the coming generations, our 
sons and our grandsons, will be under the dominion of 
neither Scientific Rationalism nor Dogmatic Theology, 
but of a better creed than either, of which the germs 
lie in every large and sincere soul. 

But, after all, this Exeter camp is only pitched, I 
hope, against ignorance, ' anarch old.' The leading 
soldiers of science, which is systematised knowledge, 
make no attack on theology or on moral philosophy ; 
the attack comes from the other side, from those who 
think (not to speak of pretenders or mercenaries) 
religion to be in danger, and rush forward with banners 
and watchwords. ( I confess,' says one of the shrewd- 
est of clergymen, f I confess I have some considerable 
dread of the indiscreet friends of religion. I shudder 
at the consequence of fixing the great proofs of reli- 
gion upon any other basis than that of the widest 
investigation and most honest statement of facts. I 
allow such nervous and timid friends to religion to be 
the best and most pious of men ; but a bad defender 
of religion is so much the most pernicious person in 
the whole community that I most humbly hope such 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 153 

friends will evince their zeal for religion by ceasing to 
defend it.' * 

No (taking the good Canon's words in a wider 
sense than perhaps he wrote them), religion is in no 
danger ; although articles and creeds, which are but 
a language, a convenience, not absolute and eternal, 
by the mere advance of knowledge must become 
changed in their significance, and altered in form. But 
who is he that would therefore desire to check the 
progress of knowledge? The good, brave, unselfish 
man ? — the wise man ? I trow not. Much rubbish 
must be cleared away out of people's minds. Does 
the Man of Science in investigating and elucidating 
the phenomena of the material world tamper with my 
religion, my sense of duty and purity, and truth, 
my feelings of love, joy, and wonder and adoration, my 
passionate longing for the Spiritual Best and Highest? 
Just as much as a grammarian's inquiry into the com- 
ponents of language affects the influence of Shake- 
speare's or of Goethe's mind on mine. 

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Before we 
insist on finding a material basis for ( another world,' 
and on torturing or hardening ourselves if we cannot 
find it, let us consider how far we are able to trace 
any material basis for the present world — I mean the 
spiritual world — which does exist and in which we now 
are. It seems clear to me that the connection or rela- 
tion between the spiritual world in man's mind and the 
1 Sydney Smith, Moral Philosophy, 2nd edit. p. 272. London : 1850. 



154 AT EXETER. 

physical world, is at once true, truth itself, and yet 
altogether untraced by human wit, is probably for 
ever untraceable. The notion that a self-evident truth 
is not to be counted as a truth, unless you can discover 
how it is so, is a growing delusion now-a-days, — reac- 
tion, I suppose, from the opposite or superstitious state 
of mind that has so long been dominant, in which many 
self-evident falsehoods were passed current as truths 
by mere dint of assertion. Morals and religion are 
safe as the solar system ; nay, a million times more 
safe. But I am not so sure that we are not entering 
into a phase of human history in which the multitude 
blindly following a philosophy imperfect in itself, and 
by them not at all understood, will for a time abjure 
all morals and religion as matters of conscience, as 
matters of fact, and try to do with expediency and 
enlightened selfishness. But they will not find they 
can travel far on this path ; they must flounder into 
quagmires, and their feet stumble on the dark moun- 
tains. Then will their ancient and famous company of 
traditional guides, no doubt, try its best, and with fine 
opportunity, to reassume its old captainship, and to 
lead back to the old broad road going roundabout and 
roundabout. 

Plainly : those who are the teachers of the new 
generation (they are neither the parsons nor the school- 
masters) are themselves in need of more clearness, 
first in their minds, second in their words, as to the 
truths of human life. The deep questions which are 



UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS. 155 

now agitating the minds of men are no longer (what- 
ever some may think or pretend to think) those of verbal 
inspiration, and historical incarnation, much less of 
apostolic succession and the power of popes and 
councils, but of the possibility of any religion what- 
ever, any awe, or trust, or obedience, or hope, anything 
to look up to, — whether Richter's bitterly sarcastic 
words ought not to be accepted as the best solution of 
the great enigma : f the universe, a machine ; God a 
force ; man's future, a coffin.' 

It is neither natural nor wholesome, surely, for 
the human mind to dwell upon these unanswerable 
questions ? The secret of the world is hid from 
man. How should it be otherwise ? But everywhere 
are posted people, a privileged and powerful class, in- 
cessantly repeating these questions, dinning them into 
our ears, insisting upon them, and then giving sham- 
answers, to the truth of which we are required to 
assent, nay to swear. Some of us really accept or 
try our best to accept the answers ; the vastly greater 
number for convenience pretend to accept them ; 
but there is a wide-spread and daily extending sense 
in the general mind that these regular answers are 
only sham-answers, and that we none of us really believe 
them, only make-believe. Meanwhile the unanswerable 
questions are continually kept before us in most un- 
natural prominence ; and, besides the regular sham- 
answers, all kinds of false and foolish answers, theories, 
guesses, and suppositions are put forward, leaving us 



156 AT EXETER. 

no peace ; and now when any Man of Science, inves- 
tigator of the material world, brings forward his budget 
of connected facts, his contribution to knowledge, we 
shout at him, ( Well ! — but as to these inscrutable 
questions ? What say you to them ? ' A thoroughly 
wise man, I think, would reply that he had nothing 
whatever to say to them, and would proceed with his 
own business. 

In short, both the popular mind and the scien- 
tific mind are disturbed and diseased by the perpetual 
morbid action of dogmatic theology. The scientific 
mind is in process of releasing itself from the un- 
fortunate connection. The popular mind, compara- 
tively helpless, is in a sad condition which it can 
neither quite understand nor at all escape from — an 
ancient and privileged class of professional men plying 
it with the inscrutable questions and sham-answers (in 
which even they are far from unanimous), the men of 
accurate study of the physical world evidently not 
agreeing with the professional explainers, who mean- 
while go on filling by rote the minds of all children, 
and as many others as will listen, with the inscrutable 
questions and sham-answers, and twisting these up 
inextricably with all moral and religious ideas that the 
human mind is capable of; the usual result being that 
all these, if not at once rejected, for a time grow up 
together, and then wither together. Until the day 
when science and spiritual morality shall be wholly 
and finally separated from dogmatic theology, we must 



THE RIVER EXE. 157 



live in a desperate muddle, suffering incalculable losses 
and miseries, and entailing them on our children and 
grandchildren. 

And so I leave this topic for the present, and 
step on a sunshiny morning into a railway carriage 
that speeds me along the right shore of the Exe 
( Uisge, the Keltic for water ; Exeter, if in Ireland, 
would be named something like Cahirisky, say ' Water- 
fort,' — 6 Water-city '), quickly broadening from river 
to estuary, opening to sands, to merry sea-waves, and 
showing Exmouth town on its headland opposite, with 
a little crowd of masts below. The crags and pyra- 
mids of red sandstone, the bathers sporting in the 
bright sea, the old village-green of Dawlish and the 
new villas above it, are come and gone ; so is the 
estuary of the Teign among grovy hills, with long 
wooden bridge and vessels at anchor : and here is 
Torquay, famous Torquay — lovely scenery, Italian 
climate, William of Orange, Napoleon in the Bellero- 
phon, etcetera, — transformed from a name into a 
reality. 



158 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AT TOEQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

Torquay — Modern Builders — Babbicombe — Kent's Cavern — Entozoa — 
Modern Science — On Dartmoor — Totnes — The Charm of Old Houses. 

A friend of mine, an unimpeachable authority on 
such things, told me that, some thirty years ago, 
Torquay was the most beautiful place in England. Its 
wide- sweeping bay and richly wooded shores, crags 
garlanded with foliage and flowers from wave-washed 
basis to summit in the blue sky, rocky creeks that, 
while you sat musing, filled silently with crystal green 
of the rising tide; its old-fashioned cottages under 
shady rows of elms, peaceful neighbouring farmhouses 
and inland meadows, old field-paths and honeysuckle 
lanes, — these he recalled with a regretful delight in 
contrast with the Torquay of our own day, the rows of 
brick and stucco, felled trees, rocks blasted away, gaunt 
wide roads, cockney shops and churches, sunbaked 
esplanades and piers, the once clear tide polluted with 
torrents of feculence, so that bathing (as a medical man 
there told me) can hardly be ventured on. 

( Vast improvements on the whole,' says and thinks 



MODERN B UILDERS. 159 

the practical man, whose name is Legion ; ' investment 
of capital, — increase of business and employment — na- 
tional prosperity — greatest happiness even (if you like 
to bring that in) of the greatest number.' Well, the 
world must change, certainly, and in its changes some 
old and precious things must go. We must lose 
something, but we gain a great deal more, you say. 
How ? in happiness ? It seems to me, I confess, 
though a very expensive, not a very happy gene- 
ration, this of ours. I doubt if it really enjoys its 
stucco and its gravelled esplanades so very much. Are 
they necessary to its pleasure or even to its comfort, or are 
they rather the vulgar inventions of scheming builders, 
contractors, and engineers, and huckstering trades- 
people, like the large shop-fronts and staring placards 
of the period ? Moreover, — change is inevitable, often 
reasonable : admitted. But the changes that have 
overrun and disfigured many of the fairest spots in 
England during the last twenty years, were they all 
inevitable, allowable, and reasonable ? merely the 
natural result (whether pleasant or otherwise) of the 
course of prevalent ideas and manners ? or, on the 
contrary, were they in very many instances as much 
opposed to practical common sense and common honesty 
as to the sense of beauty and venerableness ? Is it 
not the notorious fact that most of these new-built 
pleasure-towns are, in commercial phrase, thoroughly 
rotten places, insolvent, staggering on from season to 
season under a burden of debt incurred in making 



160 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

roads and rails, piers, villas, terraces, crescents, which 
were not really wanted — in crowding into five years the 
proper work of fifty ? Over and over again you find, 
on a little inquiry, that a great part of the splendid 
new town — the brilliant fashionable watering-place, is 
mortgaged to cunning builders and lawyers lying 
perdue. The names on the shops and lodging-houses 
seldom indicate a real ownership. Small wonder if 
these unhappy creatures seize the stranger with vora- 
city, suck his blood without mercy. And the showy 
houses are often ill built, soon begin to lose their one 
virtue of a smug tidiness, and fall into premature 
decay almost before they arrive at their teens. Three- 
fourths of them were not wanted, are 'bad invest- 
ments,' and likely to grow worse ; meanwhile they 
disfigure the world, and transmit, not improvements 
and conveniences, but eyesores and obstacles to the 
coming generations, who will certainly prefer to 
follow their own tastes, and be little grateful for these 
tawdry piles of ill-burnt brick and bad mortar. In 
short, from the mere business point of view, these 
6 vast improvements ' mostly rest on a basis of greed, 
gambling, and unveracity : — 

The earth hath bubbles as the water has, 
And these are of them. 

Would they might vanish 'as breath into the wind; ' 
but unhappily they are ulcers, and will leave perma- 
nent scars on the fair face of nature. 

A steamer, coasting the bay, put me ashore at 



BABBICOMBE 161 

Babbicombe, where I plunged ecstatically into the 
translucent water of a sea-cove walled with lofty 
rocks, and swimming round a corner faced the beau- 
tiful sunny shadowy coast sweeping off towards Lyme 
Regis, red crags crested with green slopes and woods, 
every steep rock and crevice hung with foliage and 
broidered with creeping verdure ; the little strand of 
Babbicombe, half-moon-shaped and white as the moon, 
receiving kiss after kiss from the purple sea ; and over 
all a pure blue sky. 

One great blot there was, one eyesore, a conspi- 
cuous headland hacked and torn away by quarrymen ; 
and at Anstey's Cove, across the hill, I found another 
headland undergoing the same treatment by the same 
wealthy lord-of-the-soil. One does not exactly cen- 
sure this ; still there are a few people who would 
rather not make money precisely thus, any more than 
by butchering or tavern-keeping. 

A walk over the hills brought me to a verge looking 
down into Anstey's Cove, where the red cliffs and 
tumbled fragments, crested and seamed with bright 
green sward, the firm sands, purple sea, sunny blue 
sky, seemed familiar as my birth-place, by reason of a 
little picture of the place by George Boyce on my wall 
at home. I was able at last to satisfy my curiosity as 
to the end of the headland, which lay outside the 
picture ; but I missed the man on horseback from the 
road, forgetting for an instant that he must have passed 
a long while ago. 

M 



162 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

An elderly man and his pretty little grand-daughter 
were at the choice view-point where a block of stone 
lies on the bank by way of seat. They seemed 
to take little or no notice of the prospect ; were 
come to meet the child's mother who had gone down 
to the beach on some errand. The man lived only a 
mile or two away, but had not been here for I think he 
said ten years before to-day. He was a mason and 
had speculated in house-building, not to his gain, I 
understood ; but some one else whom he Darned, some 
contractor, had made a lot of money, and on this he 
would have talked for hours. His eyes were turned 
inwards and downwards : to his entrails as Sweclenbor^ 
would have said. This is the state of vast numbers 
around us, and held to be the right state for them too. 
I cannot think so. At all events these are some of the 
men, with their 200/. capital, their greediness and 
stupidity, who build Cockney ville-super- mare on every 
fair coast, with the co-operation of speculators, loan- 
societies, building-companies, cunning lawyers, quack- 
architects, gambling contractors, and swindling money- 
brokers. The little local men commonly lose their 
venture. There are some more rows of tawdry stucco, 
for the beau monde and its imitators, while the fashion 
lasts, to lounge and flirt and yawn away a part of its time 
in; while quieter folk, instead of a homely lodging, must 
pay three or four times as much for French varnish 
and gilt curtain rings, with a hundred times worse food 



KENT 'S HOLE. 163 

and attendance than of old, and no kindness or grati- 
tude. 

After a delightful spell of solitary freedom in the 
midst of beautiful scenery, I joined a swarm of masters 
and scholars in science, and we all made together for 
Kent's Hole, a rather ugly slimy cavern burrowing 
and branching into the limestone bowels of a grovy 
hill. From hot sun and dusty hedgerows we stepped 
into an icy gloom dim-lit with numerous candles stuck 
against the dripping walls, on gluey stalagmites and 
heaps of quarried rubbish; heard a geologic lecture, 
then wandered off through narrow passages, and 
peeped into dark holes, and out again to the hot air 
and cheerful daylight world. In these unsunned re- 
cesses under the slow incrustations of many thousand 
years are found bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave- 
bears, and other monsters, and less deeply imbedded, 
tokens of the presence of human creatures like our- 
selves, bone needles, flint tools, and even some bones 
and skulls. 

Several men, I think three or four, dig and pick 
daily in this cavern, at the cost of the British Associa- 
tion, and under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly 
of Torquay, who has now collected herefrom over 
50,000 various bones, and kept account of the situa- 
tion and depth where each was found. 

I don't wonder that students of physical science are 
commonly long-lived, healthy, and cheerful. Their 
field of study, whatever the department may be, is 

M 2 



164 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

practically boundless. They advance into it with 
sure and deliberate steps, adding particular experi- 
ence to experience, and at the same time gaining a 
wider interest in the general universe ; while the pur- 
suit in itself is amusing and full of expectation, and 
employs the senses along with the intellect. 

In the carriage for Exeter I fell in talk with a 
gentleman whose special study is entozoa, those queer 
little creatures that live and breed inside the bodies 
of beasts, birds, and fishes, and our own too, inha- 
biting the blood, muscles, liver, brain, &c, and 
there making out life in their own fashion, with- 
out, in the majority of cases, it would seem, the 
least inconvenience to their landlord. Each of us 
lodges crowds of these, and it is very rarely that one 
turns troublesome; they are by far more peaceable 
than an ordinary Irish tenantry. My scientific friend 
tells me that his experienced eyes never fail to see 
some entozoa in every dish of animal food that comes 
to table, and often a great many. ( When there are a 
great many, what do you do ? ' f Eat 'em, if the meat 
be properly cooked. The odds are millions to one that 
no harm will come of it.' Sometimes when he encoun- 
ters an extra-large Distoma, or Spiroptera, or Cysticer- 
cus, he sets it aside on his plate, and not long ago 
totally refused a dish of mutton because it swarmed 
with Echinococci ; for if a creature from the body of 
a sheep, cow, pig, be transferred alive into yours or 
mine, the consequences might be serious. Such ap 



ENTOZOA. 165 

pearances at the dinner-table might make some people 
uncomfortable, but my friend proved no exception to 
the rule as to men of science, being a merry fresh- 
complexioned man whose food clearly agreed with 
him. 

The universality of entozootic life makes one cease 
to care much about it. But trichinosis is a real and 
dreadful disease for all that, like hydrophobia; and 
though one may see no risk in eating a rasher or 
patting a dog, there are certain precautions fit to be 
observed. My microscopical friend does not think the 
little beasts in the pig more dangerous than others ; 
but ham, sausages, &c, are often eaten with slight 
cooking, whence come evils. 

Science, it would seem, is in hopes of being able to 
trace all the steps between an Entozoon and a Goethe, 
but long before it arrives at Goethe's soul (pass me 
the old-fashioned phrase) science will find its instru- 
ments fail it, I imagine. 

Divide, combine, search, sift and pry ; 
Eetort and microscope apply ; 
Light, electricity, explain, 
The earth, the sun, the blood, the brain : 
All's thus and thus. But now declare 
Why things are right and things are fair ; 
"What's Duty ? Beauty ? tell us whence 
Are Love, Truth, Hope, and Beverence ? 
But stay ! — hast thou this last ? If not, 
Tho' thou couldst make the cold sea hot, 
In flying chariot Sirius reach, 
Full little couldst thou learn or teach. 



166 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

I am far from thinking, however, that our leaders in 
science wish to teach that there is nothing but matter ; 
or that they suppose it possible for themselves, or for 
any man, to comprehend all phenomena physical and 
mental, or to know the innermost nature of any single 
thing. They say, as I take it, there are certain exact 
methods called scientific, of investigating any given 
subject ; to some subjects these methods are found to 
be more applicable, to others less; we will strictly 
apply these methods as far as we are able to every 
subject that presents itself. As soon as we clearly 
perceive them to be inapplicable in any case (a percep- 
tion which is an important element in the pursuit of 
truth) we will cease our attempts in that particular 
direction. On the other hand, so long as our methods 
of investigation show a real hold upon any subject and 
a fruitful relation to it, we will employ them with the 
utmost simplicity and fearlessness, — truth (which is 
multiform and yet one) being safely left to protect her 
own interests. 

This, au fond, is probably the attitude of the best 
scientific minds of our time. And yet there are, per- 
haps, some real dangers connected with the vastly 
increased activity of scientific investigation. First, a 
successful investigator is under the temptation of build- 
ing up theories, top-heavy for the basis on which they 
are raised ; of forgetting that the most learned of men 
is still but a young pupil in the great school of nature. 
Secondly, one set or combination of facts may be so 



DARTMOOR. 167 

put forward as that they shall for a time take up a 
disproportionate share of attention, and throw out of 
balance many minds of thinking men, thus affecting, 
injuriously, the general health of public thought. 
Thirdly, the tone of scientific authority itself may be 
less reverent than it might be in presence of the won- 
ders and mysteries (so unfathomed, so unfathomable) 
of the universe, and man's life therein. The Man of 
Science — I mean the Master in Science — should be 
exact, fearless, and profoundly reverent. Reverence, 
you may tell me, is a moral not an intellectual quality, 
but I own that to me it appears that moral and in- 
tellectual qualities are inseparable, and that a masterly 
insight into nature is only possible to the reverent 
spirit. True Masters, indeed, are always rare ; but 
we have usually plenty of clever people, and a fair 
supply of able ones, and some of these are no more 
unwilling to wear the robe of ephemeral mastership, 
than the multitude is unwilling to confer it. 

From Exeter to Moreton-Hampstead, on the eastern 
edge of Dartmoor, is no more than twelve miles as the 
bird flies, but hills intervene, and our railway took us 
three times the distance round about, winding at last 
among deep vales. Moreton (Moor-town) a gray old 
village, sent us on in a gig to Chagford, a smaller 
and grayer old village, with rude stone cottages strag- 
gling up-hill, and a few new brick houses of the 
meanest ugliness. To east and north rise woody hills, 



168 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

and westward the bare slopes and crest of Dartmoor, 
cheerful to-day in the sunshine, but in bad weather 
gloomy, dreary, and desolate. In summer, we are 
told, folk say, i Chaggiford, and what d'ye think o't ? ' 
in winter, e Chaggiford — Good Lord ! ' Climbing Fea- 
therbed Lane, the dry course of a mountain stream, its 
rocks bordered with ferns, shaded with hazel and holly, 
we emerged a-top on the heather, and made for Castor 
Rock, one of those huge heaps of grey granite which 
dominate like ancient castles the broad expanses of 
Dartmoor, its slopes and ridges of heather, and its 
huge morasses whence flow a dozen rivers to all points 
of the compass. 

It was sultry in the vale, but not on Castor Rock. 
A strong and steady southerly breeze swept over 
purple heath and green fern-brake, blowing health 
and freshness into our blood. Broad sunny lights 
and shadows rested on the wide-spread loneliness. 
Far below we could see, winding through the waste, 
an avenue or double row of rude stones, whose 
origin and purpose are lost in antiquity, and in a seam 
fledged with coppice the infant Teign was leaping, 
invisible, though not inaudible, from pool to pool. 
A large and pure contentment infused itself into our 
souls, and we found nothing better for the time than 
to lie on' Castor Rock, drinking in the solitude, the 
antique mystery, and the autumnal glory of the vast 
moorland. Descending, we failed not, as sworn hydro- 
philists, to visit the Teign, where tall trees, mossy 



TOTNES. 169 

rocks, crystal pools brimmed with green shadows, 
drew us into a mood of more gay and lyrical delight. 
On our drive back to Moreton we heard some anec- 
dotes from a clergyman of the neighbourhood, of the 
people's belief, at this day, in pixies, witches, and 
supernatural cures. ( Seventh son of a seventh son,' 
is a not uncommon inscription, he said, on a herb- 
doctor's signboard, and the herb-doctor's patients are 
mainly treated by ' charms ' of various kinds. 

It was nightfall when I quitted the train at Totnes 
station, and walked off alone along a dark bit of road 
under the stars, to enter a strange town, — a special 
delight ; turned a corner into the long, narrow, 
roughly-paved High Street; downhill, to the poetic 
sign of The Seven Stars, a large old-fashioned hostel, 
with garden to the river ; then, after choosing bed- 
room, out again for the never-to-be-omitted-when- 
possible immediate and rapid survey, by any sort of 
light, of the place not seen before since I was born. 

Uphill goes the steep, narrow street, crossed, half- 
way up, by a deep arch bearing a house ; then the houses 
on each side jut over the side-path supported on 
stumpy stone pillars ; then I zigzag to the left, still 
upwards, and by-and-by come to the last house, and the 
last lamp, throwing its gleam on the hedge-rows and 
trees of a solitary country road. This last house is an 
old and sizable one, with mullioned windows, one of 
which is lighted, and on the blind falls a shadow from 



170 AT TORQUAY AXD ELSEWHERE. 

within of a woman sewing. The slight and placid 
movements of this figure, at once so shadowy and so 
real, so close at hand and so remote, are suggestive of 
rural contentment, a life of security and quietude. 
Yet how different from this the facts may be ! 

Inexhaustibly interesting to the imagination is any old 
edifice ; and the nearest to my own sympathies, the most 
touching, is neither church nor castle, but a dwelling- 
house, not a grand one but such as generations of the 
stay-at-home sort of people have been born in, have 
lived in, and died in ; every particle of its wood and 
stone, as it were, imbued with human life. No vast 
antiquity is needed; a hundred years does as well as 
a thousand; long dates only confuse and baffle the 
imagination. Enough if the house be evidently before 
our time, if men before us have lived and died there. 
Death, the great mystery, is the dignifier of Human 
Life. Where Death has been, as formerly where 
lio'htnino; struck, the ground is sacred. 

Next morning I mounted to the castle-keep of 
Judael de Totnais, through a wildly-tangled shrub- 
bery, and from the mouldered battlements looked over 
Totnes's grey slate roofs and gables, and the silvery 
Dart winding amongst wooded hills. Opposite, stood 
the tall, square, red sandstone tower of the old church,, 
buttressed to the top, and with a secondary round 
turret running up from ground to sky near the centre 
of its north face, an unusual and picturesque feature. 
Then hied I to the churchyard, and beside it, in a 



THE OLD GUILDHALL. 171 

rough back lane, saw an old low building, with an old 
low porch ; the old key was in the old iron-guarded 
door, and I entered, without question asked, the old 
Gruildhall of the old town. Over the bench hung a 
board painted with the arms of Edward VI., sup- 
ported by lion and wyvern, ( Anno Domini, 1553,' 
with motto, i Du et mond Droyit.' The latticed win- 
dows looked into an orchard whose apples almost 
touched the panes. It was a little hall Avith a little 
dark gallery at one end, for the mediaeval public, and 
under this the barred loopholes for the mediaeval pri- 
soners to peep through. But it is still in use, as testi- 
fied by two modern cards on the walls : ( This side, 
Plaintiff and Plaintiff's witnesses ; ' i This side, De- 
fendant and Defendant's witnesses.' On the Defen- 
dants' side I found roughly cut on the wood panel, 
4 R. P., 1633,' but could not guess in what cause he 
appeared. 

No pleasanter change in travel from more or less 
fatiguing exercise, than the rest in motion of a river- 
steamboat, sliding from reach to reach of some easy- 
flowing stream, like that which bore us seven miles 
from the woody slopes of Totnes to the steeper hills of 
Dartmouth's almost land-locked harbour, and again, 
from broader to narrower reaches, back again to 
Totnes. Then, bidding adieu to The Seven Stars, 
off started the Rambler once more on his favourite 
vehicle, sometimes called Irish tandem — namely, one 



172 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. 

foot before another ; striking off by field, park, 
meadow, and millponcl for a certain hamlet obscurely 
lurking somewhere among the swelling hills and deep 
lanes — Dean Prior, the church and vicarage of old 
Eobin Herrick. 



173 



CHAPTER IX. 



TO DEAN PRIOR. 



Devonshire Lanes — Herrick's Poetry — Dean Prior — Sketch of the Poet's 
Life — Herrick and Martial. 



I started on foot from Totnes in search of a hamlet 
hidden among rounded hills of corn and coppice, and 
shady Devonshire lanes, deep, steep, solitary; often 
showing, where the tangled hedges opened at some 
gate, a wide and rich prospect over harvest fields and 
red ploughed lands. Long and sultry was the pil- 
grimage, the way often taken at haphazard, sometimes 
mistaken, in lack of people or houses ; but at last the 
scent grew hot, when, after climbing an endless lane, I 
found myself descending t'other side the hill with 
Dartmoor's uplands before me, dim in afternoon sun- 
light ; and, at foot, the square church tower of Dean 
Prior, of which Robert Herrick was a long while 
vicar, two centuries ago. Many a time he certainly 
trudged up and down this steep old lane — now lament- 
ing his banishment from London, now humming a lyric 



174 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

fancy newly sprung somehow in that queer gross-fine 
brain of his. 

More discontents I never had 

Since I was born, than here ; 
Where I have been, and still am sad, 

In this dull Devonshire. 
Yet justly too, I must confesse, 

I ne'r invented such 
Ennobled numbers for the presse 

Than [As ?] where I loath'd so much. 

Saying these lines to a tune of their own making, I 
went down the long lane, its wide borders all a-tangle 
with leaves and flowers, mint, meadowsweet, golden 
fleabane, blackhead, hemp-agrimony, and red campion 
— simple as it grew there, the very Lychnis dioica of 
that learned lady at Exeter. It seemed no way puffed 
up by its new fame in the local newspapers. Then 
there were countless green tufts of hartstongue, male 
fern, and bracken, and a few late foxglove-bells. In 
front, at every step rose higher the bare purply slopes 
of Dartmoor, ridge over ridge, putting on, from this 
point of view and in this light, the aspect of a solemn 
mountain region. 

I was not prepared to find so grave a charm of 
landscape in Herrick's Devonshire, and it has left no 
trace in his verses, which carry the impression (I mean 
the best of them) of a quiet, sleepy, remote ruralism 
among flowery meadows, hay and corn-fields and old 
farm-houses, its winter season cheered with great wood 
fires, flowing cups, and old-world games. 

Of the larger aspects of nature and life, Herrick 



HERRICRS POETRY. 175 

had no apprehension — at least, no habitual appre- 
hension ; if he caught a glimpse of these it was by 
effort and against his will. His flower-pieces have a 
flower-like delicacy and sweetness, as in the unfading 
little song — 



» 



Or this- 



Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 

Old Time is still a-fiying, 
And this same flow'r that blooms to-day 

To-morrow will be dying, &c. 

Faire Daffodills, we weep to see 

You haste away so soone ; 
As yet the early rising sun 
Has not attain'd his noone. 
Stay, stay, 
Until the hasting day 
Has run 
But to the even-song ; 
And having pray'd together, we 
Will goe with you along, &c. 

His pages are full of roses, violets, primroses, daffodils, 
breathing a natural freshness : — 

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, 
Of April, May, of June, of July-flowers ; 
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. 

Herrick has, I think, a particular charm of his 
own. In his style is a quality of elegant naivete, 
grown rare of late in English poetry. The French 
cultivate and excel in this. Our Thomas Hood has 
it. In his ( Matins, or Morning Prayer,' old Robin 



First wash thy heart in innocence, then bring 
Pure hands, pure habits, pure, pure everything. 



176 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

How simple without flatness are such lines as these : — 

Here down my wearied limbs I'll lay ; 
My pilgrim's staffe, my weed of gray, 
My palmer's hat, my scallop-shell, 
My cross, and cord, and all farewell. 
For having now my journey done, 
Just at the setting of the sun, 
Here have I found a chamber fit, 
G-od and good friends be thankt for it, 
Where if I can a lodger be 
A little while from tramplers free, 
At my uprising next I shall, 
If not requite, yet thank ye all, &c. 

He abounds in happy turns of phrase, which sometimes 
carry a very pleasant tinge of humour. A quaint 
gravity sits well upon him, as in the lines ( Thus I, 
Passe by, And die,' &c, or these — ( Give me a cell, 
to dwell, Where no foot hath a path,' &c. Of delicate 
sense of metre, the most specially poetic of natural 
gifts (using the word poetic in its strict meaning), he 
has a larger share perhaps than any other English 
poet of his rank. As good in its manner as the 
pensive gaiety of i Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' 
is the jollity of 

The May-pole is up, 

Now give me the cup ; 
I'll drink to the garlands around it ; 

But first unto those 

Whose hands did compose 
The glory of flowers that crown'd it. 

And the best of his longer pieces (yet not long), ( Co- 
rinna going a-Maying,' winds delightfully throughout 
its course. Verse, by the bye, like wine, acquires a 



ARS LOKGA. 177 

special fine flavour by age. But to imitate this in 
new verse is like fabricating mock old-wine, and such 
concoctions are scarcely palatable or wholesome, though 
they often take the public taste for a while. 

I hardly know why Herrick seems interesting 
beyond other poets of a similar rank. There was not 
' much in ' the man, and there is not much in his 
verses : and perhaps that's just it, inasmuch as the 
endurance of his little writings gives strong testimony 
to the value of art. His subject-matter is neither 
new nor remarkable. There is no interest of narrative 
or of characterisation ; very slight connection with 
the times he lived in, or with any set of opinions, 
national, social, or individual. That which has saved 
the verses and name of the obscure Devonshire vicar 
is simply and solely ars poetica. The material is 
nothing, the treatment everything. If good verse 
can preserve even trivialities, how potent a balsam 
is good verse, and how fit to entrust fine things to ! 

What does appear of the man himself disposes one 
to a mood of good-humoured slightly contemptuous 
toleration — usually a rather agreeable mood, We 
can't look up to him ; he is frail, faulty, sometimes 
rather scandalous, often absurd; but he confesses as 
much himself, and gives the world in general that sort 
of easy lazy toleration which he would fain receive. 
A Pagan he habitually is, though varnished with 
another creed. The ideas of home and fireside, of 
pleasure, of death, even (despite his parsonhood) of 

N 



178 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

marriage, of prayer, of funeral-rites, present them- 
selves to his mind in the same light and commonly 
under the same forms as they did to Horace or Martial. 
It seems more than mere adoption of classic phraseo- 
logy and imagery, like that of Milton in e Lycidas ; ' 
it was his way of seeing things : — 

So when you and I are made 

A fable, song, or fleeting shade ; 

All love, all liking, all delight, 

Lie drown'd with lis in endlesse night, &c. 

This is the felicity he truly aims at : 

I'll feare no earthly powers, 
But care for crowns of flowers. 

Anything for a quiet life : 

The Gods are easie, and condemne 
All such as are not soft like them. 

He loves good cheer, and is convinced that 

Cold and hunger never yet 
Co'd a noble verse beget. 

In his 6 Farewell to Sack,' i Welcome to Sack,' and 
elsewhere, are some admirable Bacchanalianisms. An 
easy-going, light-hearted man, he is not given to look 
below the surface of things. He has no narrative or 
dramatic power. His views of human life are general, 
coloured with perception of beauty, with gaiety and 
desire, with sense of the shortness of life. His attempts 
at individualising take the form of the rudest ill- 
drawn caricature. His amorous verse is frankly sen- 
suous and outward. His Julia, Electra, Corinna, 



LYRICAL POETS. 179 

are names for the bodily sweetness of womanhood. 
There is just a modicum of sentimentality, itself 
superficial, or, as it were, subcutaneous. We find 
here no chivalrous strain like Lovelace's ( Tell me 
not, sweet ; ' no ingenious comfort in neglect like 
Wither's c Shall I, wasting in despair ; ' no heap of 
glittering clevernesses as in Donne's pages (with 
here and there a wonderful bit of old coloured- glass, 
as it were, worth keeping even as a fragment) ; no 
exaltation of mental and disparagement of external 
qualities as in Carew's f He that loves a rosie cheek.' 
Herrick sings of Electra's petticoat, of Julia's bosom, 
of bright eyes, trim ankles, fragrant breath. He is 
not, or very seldom, prurient, only pagan, bodily, ex- 
ternal. There is not the slightest hint of those modern 
schools — the sceptical, the scoffing, or the diabolic. 
His tone, too, entirely differs from the witty, ingenious 
immorality of the next generation, Rochester, Sedley, 
and other Merry-Monarchy men. Herrick's collected 
poems were published in 1648, when the author was 
about fifty-seven. 

But here is Dean Prior. What is it ? Church and 
churchyard on one side the road, vicarage on the other; 
three or four cottages, a brook, a farmyard, some soli- 
tary country lanes ; visible inhabitants, a man and a 
boy, to whom, afterwards, enter an old woman. The 
vicarage, though it has a grey old-fashioned look, is 
not of Herrick's time — a disappointment ; 'tis perhaps 
of Anne's reign, or one of the earlier Georges. But 

N 2 



180 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

it probably stands on the site of the older edifice. The 
present vicar was unluckily from home, and the old 
woman who showed the church knew nothing beyond 
parish matters of her own day. The church, old, but- 
restored throughout, is now a trim ordinary edifice of 
stone, with a west tower. Inside you find three aisles 
(it is not a small church), and on the wall of the north 
aisle a brass plate, about 36 inches by 20, surrounded 
by a deep frame of white stone or marble, cut into 
Renaissance scrollwork, like what you see on title- 
pages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The 
inscription runs : f In this Churchyard lie the remains 
of Robert Herrick:, Author of the Hesperides, 
and Other Poems, Of an ancient family in Leicester- 
shire, and born in the year 1591. He was educated at 
St. John's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 
Presented to this Living by King Charles I. in the 
year 1629, Ejected during the Commonwealth, and 
reinstated soon after the Restoration. This Tablet 
was erected to his Memory by his Kinsman, William 
Percy Herrick, of Beau Manor Park, Leicestershire, 
a.d. 1857. 

Our mortall parts may wrapt in seare-clothes lye, 
Great spirits never with their bodies die. 

Hesperides. 
Virtus Omnia Nobilitat. 

The churchyard has many old graves, among which 
the poet's lies perdue. 

Dean is a lonesome place, the old dame admits ; 



' HESPERIDES: 181 

so much so, it appears, that servants can hardly 
be o-ot to live at the vicarage. Think what it mast 
have been 200 years ago. No wonder if the lively 
young scamp who had left Cambridge in debt, and 
lived a gay life in London till both purse and credit 
were quite exhausted ; getting somehow ordained, 
as a pis-aller, and then presented to a living by his 
friends' influence (for such appears to be something 
like what the few known facts amount to) ; no wonder 
that this jovial, clever, petted, insolvent, amatory poei 
turned parson, finding himself stuck in the Devonshire 
clay, four days' journey from town, should sometimes 
grumble at his fate. He was about thirty-eight years 
old when he came to Dean, and remained there some 
twenty years, till Cromwell turned him out. It was 
in 1648, the last year of King Charles (and which 
that monarch spent mostly at Carisbrooke), that Her- 
rick's volume appeared, ( to be sold at the Crown and 
Marygold in Saint Paul's Churchyard.' It is dedicated 
f to the Most Illustrious and Most Hopefull Prince, 
Charles, Prince of Wales.' The political allusions are 
not many; all on the loyal side, of course. It is 
manifest that he had no notion of the dangerous con- 
dition of the king's affairs. Nor indeed had the king 
himself, even up to that day in January when he so 
unwillingly appeared in Westminster Hall, and at first 
( laughed ' when the charges against him were read. 
1648 was an odd year for the publication in London 
of a book of light lyrics, mingled with compliments to 
royalty. 



182 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

See, this brook among the hazel-bushes is that very 
Dean-bourne to which friend Robin bade farewell in 
no very affectionate strain. Never could he wish to 
see it again, e were thy streames silver, or thy rocks all 
gold.' 

Rockie thou art ; and rockie we discover 
Thy men, and rockie are thy wayes all over. 
men, manners ; now, and ever knowDe 
To be a rockie generation ! 
A peeple currish, churlish as the seas, 
And rude almost as rudest salvages ! 

On his i Returne to London,' he writes : 

From the dull confines of the drooping west, 
To see the day spring in the fruitful east, 
Eavisht in spirit, I come, nay more, I flie 
To thee, blest place of my nativitie ! 



London my home is : though by hard fate sent 
Into a long and irksome banishment. 

Yet, by degrees, as old age crept on, and after expe- 
rience, probably, of how much worse it is to have no 
home than a dull one, he became reconciled to his rural 
life, and has left many pleasant pictures of it. 

Sweet country life, to such unknown 
Whose lives are others', not their own. 

His ( Grange, or Private Wealth,' is delightfully 

quaint ; in which, as often elsewhere, he praises 

A maid, my Frew, by good luck sent 

To save 
That little, Fates me gave or lent. 

When Charles II. was c restored.' Herrick came back 
to Dean, now a man of near seventy years of age, and 



1 NOBLE NUMBERS: 183 

there lie lived peaceably some fourteen years longer, 
and laid down his bones in the dull quiet churchyard 
through which he had passed so many thousand times 
from vicarage to church, and from church to vicarage. 
The Poet did not entirely forget his cassock. In 
deference thereto, he appended to his s Hesperides ' a 
set of quasi-religious poems under the title of e Noble 
Numbers,' but most of these are evidently no less arti- 
ficial than that one which is so arranged as to print in 
the figure of a cross. The best pieces, probably, in 
this division, are f A True Lent,' and the ( Litanie,' 
which has a serious naivete that is touching, though 
even here peeps out evidence that it is mainly the poet's 
fancy that is engaged. This is quaintly natural : 

"When the priest his last hath pray'd, 
And I nod to what is said, 
'Cause my speech is now decay'd, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

but this runs into the comic : 

When the artless doctor sees 
No one hope, hut of his fees, 
And his skill runs on the lees, 

Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 

The true and habitual meditative glances of the man 
were turned to the shortness of life ; his philosophy 
was the wisdom of gathering rosebuds while you may. 
Moments of graver mood no doubt he also had, and he 
expresses here and there the sense of hurt or rather 
ruffled conscience in one whose love of pleasure is 
stronger than his will. He stumbles and hurts his 



184 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

shin, recovers himself, walks carefully a few steps, 
grows careless, and trips again, never quite falls, but 
goes on his way stumbling and resolving not to stumble 
so much. 

A fat, sly, droll, good-humoured, lazy, smutty old 
parson was Robin Herrick, thick-necked, double- 
chinned, with a twinkle of humour in his eyes, fond of 
eating, drinking, and singing, part man-of-the-world, 
part homely and simple almost to childishness. He 
doesn't hate anybody, blames nothing but what teases 
him, longs for a quiet life, has no opinions, and is ready 
to conform to anything. He reads little, looks into a 
few favourite Latin poets, cares very slightly for con- 
temporary literature, saving the verses of two or three 
friends of his, and especially i Saint Ben ' (whose 
minor poems are a good deal like Robin's). There is 
no Saint Will in his calendar. Will, unhappily, 
though clever, was not an i educated ' man, like nous 
autres ; and this undoubtedly was the general feeling as 
to him among the lettered class. 

A century after the old vicar's funeral, it would 
have seemed that his verses (though not without some 
recognition in their own day) were no less lost in silence 
and oblivion than his bones. But they possessed an 
unsuspected vitality. Somebody rediscovered them, 
and made known the fact in the { Gentleman's Maga- 
zine ' in 1796 and 1797; the i Quarterly Review' 
followed suit, with due deliberation, in 1810. By that 
time a selection from Herrick's poems had appeared, 



HERRI CK AND MARTIAL. 185 

edited by Dr. Nott. In 1823 a collective edition was 
published at Edinburgh, another by Pickering in 
1846; f Selections' by Murray in 1839; 'Works' 
(but not complete) by H. Gr. Clarke & Co. in 1844 ; 
1 Works ' by Reeves & Turner, edited by E. Walford, 
1859 — from which my quotations are made. Lastly, 
a complete edition, including several pieces hitherto 
uncollected, was published in 1869 by J. Russell 
Smith, edited by W. C. Hazlitt. 

Whether or not it is necessary or desirable to resus- 
citate all the writings of such a writer as our old 
friend, is a question of no small importance. His 
Floralia, so to speak, are accompanied by a great deal 
of licence. He sets before his guests roast partridge, 
apricot tart, and clotted cream, but alas ! with these, 
rotten fish, and even dirt-pies. He is not only often 
sensual, but not seldom coarse and even filthy, in imi- 
tation for the most part of classical models. He has 
gleaned and translated from Anacreon and from 
Horace, but most I think from Martial. For example, 
i What kind of Mistresse he would have ' (329), has 
its parallel in the Roman poet's ' Qualem, Flacce, 
velim quseris, nolimve puellam,' &c. ; as have these 
lines 

Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, 
Unlesse they have some wanton carriages : (p. 414). 

in Martial's { Ad Cornelium' (i. 36). 

4 On a Perfumed Lady' (155) conveys the ' non 



186 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

bene olet, qui semper bene olet.' Herrick's epitaphs 
much resemble that pretty one on Erotion^ 

Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra (x. 61). 

Fat be my hinde ; unlearned be my wife ; 
Peacefull my night ; my day devoid of strife (420) 

is a translation of 

Sit mini verna satur : sit non doctissima conjux ; 
Sit nox cum somno : sit sine lite dies (ii. 90) ; 

and so is 

When the rose reigns, and locks with ointment shine 
Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine. 

of 

Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli, 
Tunc me vel rigidi legant Catones. (x. 19). 

6 To my ill Reader/ agrees with l Ad Fidentinum ' 
(i. 39). 

He often echoes Martial's f Possum nil ego sobrius/ 
and his 



nturque rosis tempora sutilibus, 
Jam vicina jubent nos vivere Mausolea, 

as well as imitates the old writer's confidence in his 
verses' immortality — 

Casibus hie nullis ; nullis delebilis annis. 

Herrick's 

Let others to the printing presse run fast ; 

Since after death comes glory, He not haste (p. 450) 

is Martial's 

Vos tamen nostri ne festinate libelli: 

Si post fata venit gloria, non propero. (v. 10) 

and so on. 



LATIN POETRY. 187 

In a crowd of short epigrams, if lie fails to match 
the unparalleled foulness of Domitian's flatterer, he 
outdoes the occasional pointlessness of his prototype : 

Upon Eeles. Epig. 
Eeles winds and turnes, and cheats and steales : yet Eeles 
Driving these sharking trades, is out of heels. 

Upon Pennie. 
Brown bread Tom Pennie eates, and must of right, 
Because his stock will not hold out of white. 

Upon Mttdge. 

Mudge every morning to the postern comes, 
His teeth all out, to rince and wash his gummes. 

Upon Ceoot. 
One silver spoon shines in the house of Croot, 
Who cannot buie or steale a second to't. 

Flatness in this degree becomes funny, but it seems 
scarcely worth while to go on making luxurious re- 
prints of matter like this. The question as to foul 
parts, unhappily too many, is more serious. Surely, 
mere filthy words, devoid of either literary or anti- 
quarian value — these, at least, need not be carefully 
resuscitated, be kept alive and in circulation, because 
the writer of them also wrote things worthy of pre- 
servation. Even in the case of ancient writers, and 
giving full weight to the venerableness of antiquity, 
should we really lose much by losing the intolerably 
disgusting passages of Catullus and Martial? At 
least let these literary coprolites (but not deodorised 
by time) rest as far as possible among the shadows of 
learned shelves. Are they thus treated ? Here is a 
subject which has received less consideration than per- 



188 TO LEAN PRIOR. 

haps it deserves. Look at certain volumes of Boko's 
i Classical Library,' which has an immense circulation 
in England and America. Any bookseller will sell 
them ; any boy may have them as cribs. They translate 
literally into English all but the perfectly intolerable 
passages ; of these they give the original text in large 
type (so that they can be turned to one after another 
at a moment's notice), accompanied by a French or 
Italian translation, or both, and also in many cases by 
a veiled English version. Martial, with his worst 
passages imbedded in a jungle of close Latin pages, is 
bad enough. Martial, with all the worst passages set 
forth in distinctive type, and all the filthiest phrases of 
the Latin tongue supplemented by French or Italian 
equivalents, or both, is a public offence. Nothing 
more charming in their way than this poet's pieces on 
the villa of Julius Martial (iv. 64), or those addressed 
to the same Julius, ending 

Summum nee metuas diem, nee optes (x. 47), 

or those on his own i rus in urbe,' where a cucumber 
hasn't room to lie straight (xi. 18) ; nothing happier 
than many of his lines and phrases : yet there is in 
him a deep vein of blackguardism, a very different 
thing from sensuality. I believe him when he says he 
invented vile things deliberately to make his books sell. 
Strange, to find in his pages those solemn words 
(inscribed on a clock in Exeter Cathedral, and on the 
Temple sun-dial), e Pereunt et Imputantur.' But the 
phrase, I should think, is not applied in precisely 



LITERARY MORALS. 189 

Martial's meaning — ' If you and I,' he says to his 
friend Julius (v. 20), ' were really to enjoy our lives, 
we should quit the halls of patrons and rich people 
and the cares of public life, and drive, walk, read, 
bathe, converse at leisure. But now neither of us can 
live in his own way, and sees his good days fly and 
vanish ' — 

Nunc vivit sibi neuter, heu, bonosque 
Soles effugere atque abire sentit ; 
Qui nobis pereunt, et imputantur, 
Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur ? 

' Should any one that knows how to live (i.e., plea- 
santly) put off doing so ? ' By ( imputantur ' he seems 
to have merely meant e are reckoned up ' in our assigned 
number. Certainly the expectation of any reckoning 
in a deeper sense for his foul and deliberate treasons 
against human dignity might well have made the 
Spaniard shiver. If there be any right or wrong in 
these matters, he and such as he are damnably wrong. 

Several other volumes of i Bohn's Library ' are 
almost if not quite as bad. Nor is the indecency 
committed in a merely stolid and business-like manner; 
prurient leers and winks are not wanting in the notes, 
as any one may ascertain who will look into the 
6 Catullus,' at pages 30 and 44. In the Plague of 
London, letters were sent to obnoxious people enclos- 
ing rags from a plague sore. These pages, steeped in 
foulest mental contagion, fly over all the world, and 
especially into the hands of the young. As regards 
the relation of the sexes, Latin poetry is the most 



190 TO DEAN PRIOR. 

degraded in all literature. And now our girls are 
learning Latin. Some think all this of no conse- 
quence, but ( Rank thoughts of youth full easily run 
wild.' 

Dociles iraitandis 
Turpibus ac praxis omnes sumus. 1 

External prudishness (England is notably prudish) and 
inner coarseness make a very bad combination. 

Herrick is nothing like so bad as Martial, or as 
Herrick would himself have been perhaps as a poet of 
the Roman Empire ; still there is much of his writing 
that were best allowed to fall into oblivion. The 
graceful fancy and lyric sweetness of his best verses 
will long preserve them in men's memory. 

So, Dean Prior, adieu ! — Robert Herrick, thy name 
echoes pleasantly after all, and I drink this cup of 
cider, in default of sack, to thy half-disreputable shade. 
How unlike to thy contemporary brother-poet and 
brother-clergyman, the almost too-respectable vicar of 
Fuo-gleston, near Salisbury, — George Herbert ! 

Various the tones, the skills, the instruments ; 
One Spirit of Music at the heart of all. 

I had several questions to ask at Dean, but found 
no one to put them to. It was Saturday evening ; it 
was some four miles to Brent station, with just time 
to catch the last train for Exeter ; I caught it by the 
tip of the tail, as it were, and was whiske:! away by 
that Fiery Dragon of our period. 

1 Juvenal, xiv. 40. 



191 



CHAPTER X. 

AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

Exeter Again — A Cathedral Service — Bideford — "Westward Ho! — ■ 
Bathing — Ebenezer Jones — Clovelly. 

The tall-housed Exeter High Street, with its blazing 
shops and Saturday-night bustle, has a metropolitan 
air as I pass up. It was only yesterday morning that 
I passed down ; and a crowd of new images mean- 
while have taken lodgment in the mystic chambers of 
my brain, and swarms of thoughts have been busy. 

At the Guildhall is the police station, and with a 
constable's leave you can enter the spacious and stately 
old Gothic hall, dimly lit with gas throughout the night, 
see its lofty window with the emblazoned date c 1464,' 
and the full-length pictures of Henrietta, daughter of 
Charles L, of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, of King 
George II., of Chief Justice Pratt, the first two by 
Lely, the second two by Hudson, with several more. 
At one end is an old gallery, at the other the magis- 
trate's bench. 

Next morning I renewed and deepened my mind- 
picture of the beautiful Cathedral, and heard a Sunday 
afternoon choral service, worship without words or 
nearly, waves of solemn harmony, like the billows in a 



192 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

2freat sea-cavern, rolling down those vaulted aisles : 
and also a sermon, which was as remarkable for earnest 
eloquence as cathedral sermons usually are. Modern 
Thought, that pushed itself in last week, is gone again, 
like a ship that touched at some enchanted island, and 
all is tranquil as of old. 

Last week there were sermons on f Science and Reli- 
gion,' even here ; but the disturbers are gone. The 
lotos reigns in its old territory. As the robed proces- 
sion moved along the aisle, between ancient carven 
pillars and coloured windows, I repeated to myself — 

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, 
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave 
To each, but whoso did receive of them 
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave 
Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave 
On alien shores ; and if his fellow spake 
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave ; 
And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, 
And music in his ears his beating heart did make. 

The congregation assembled in the nave, and nearly 
filled it. A cathedral is certainly a great resource on 
a British Sunday, and the usual sermon keeps it from 
appearing too pleasant, is a proper dismality to set off 
against the music and architecture. Surely an easy 
and most valuable reform in the Church of England 
would be the total abolition of sermons in connection with 
the ordinary service. Let there be sermons, lectures, 
expositions, discourses of whatever kind, ordinary or 
special, at times and in ways thereto appointed, close 
following a service of prayer and praise if you will ; 



SERMONS. 193 

but enable us to join in such a service by itself, O 
bishops and archbishops ! and earn the gratitude of 
millions of distressed laymen, nay, I doubt not, of 
hundreds and of thousands of the clergy also. Pulpit- 
incubus ! vile impersonation of solemn ineptitude, of 
heartless and brainless routine, pretending to be an 
oracle, a prophet, an angel, how many souls hast thou 
numb'd — coming upon them perhaps all secretly a-trem 
ble with mystic joy of praise and prayer, social at once 
and profoundly personal. What unsuspected evils — 
but hold, Patricius, wilt thou thyself begin to preach, 
and without a licence of any sort ? Certainly, however, 
this is a great evil under the sun, and I hope I shall 
live to see the end of it. 

My thoughts wandered over hill and vale to the 
lonely church of Dean Prior. The old vicar in his 
6 Hesperides' ventured to address one little piece 'To 
Jos. Lo. Bishop of Exeter : ' 

Whom sho'd I feare to write to, if I can 
Stand before you, my learn'd Diocesan ? 

for none of my poems, says he, are c so bad but you 
may pardon them.' I suppose the classicality excused 
a great deal; and indeed Herrick most likely would 
never have thought of soiling his pages as he has done, 
save through the childish superstition (only just dying 
out) of imitating classic models, not merely in style, but 
in matter. He made no independent reflections on the 
subject. It was easy and in a sense creditable to 
follow a classic lead, even into the mire. In our day 

o 



194 AT BIDE FORD AND CLOVELLY. 

the Vicar of Dean would probably have been a contri- 
butor to ' Good Words,' perhaps a canon of the cathedral, 
and consumed his share of l sack,' or else port, in a 
fitting and undemonstrative manner. What would he 
have said to Darwin and Huxley ? Not much, I fancy, 
one way or another. He would have eaten his lotos 
and been thankful. 

One of my old landscape-longings was Bideford Bay, 
and though but a day and a half remained of my holi- 
day, I resolved to catch a glimpse of that North Devon 
coast which Charles Kingsley's pen and John Hook's 
pencil are so fond of. With a passing glimpse at neat- 
looking Barnstaple, set snugly in tall trees by its river- 
brink, I reached Bideford — By-th'-Ford — after sunset; 
and having pitched camp, established a fresh basis, 
founded a new little home for a day in the civil inn by 
the water-side, set off along the quay and up and down 
the steep lanes of the old town ; then crossed the 
famous bridge, and walked left way beyond the houses, 
to look back from a hillock on the broad dim river, 
and the lamps that marked the bridge, the quay, and 
the irregular cluster of buildings rising from the water. 

Next morning showed me the broad tidal stream, 
sweeping merrily round its grovy hills and corn-slopes, 
the sunshine dancing on its mingled currents. A silver 
salmon leapt up and disappeared with a splash. Two 
or three small vessels sailed in and came to anchor. 
Rowing-boats crossed. Windlasses rattled on the 



A BRIGHT MORNING. 195 

quay. The first omnibus went off to the railway. 
Shops opened in lazy rural fashion. Whatever life 
belonged to little Bideford was awake and stirring. 
Bright morning, open window, cheerful prospect, break- 
fast, beginning with fresh salmon cutlet and ending with 
clotted cream and preserve, the offerings of Devonshire 
river, dairy, and garden — these (with temper and mood 
to taste them — how needful the postulate !) make no un- 
pleasant combination. I enjoyed it, and the main relish 
was the expectation of new scenes, of realising places 
hitherto but names, and converting them into solid 
memories. 

Our memory is ourself — e that immortal storehouse 
of the mind.' True, it may be said that material 
objects are little or nothing in themselves ; but the 
framework, the body of this world is material, and all 
its phenomena are abundantly significant in their varied 
relations to us. Moreover, even the wine of abstract 
thought is often presented to us in the cup of external cir- 
cumstance, and if that be of Cellini's gold the draught 
is more precious. A happy hour is good to remember, 
and can reflect its brightness upon dark seasons. I am 
in gloom : so have I been ere now, and said, f joy is 
no more,' yet after all came the free and happy hour, 
and I perceived that the clouds had been in me — of my 
own making most likely— not in life. With, health of 
body and soul (merely that !) nothing could daunt or 
depress me for a moment. Yet I know that the dark 
hours are fateful, they too are precious. 

o 2 



196 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

c All this about a good breakfast ! ' "Well, that was 
a part of the matter — but only a very little part, a 
touch of oil to the machinery. 

The morning's survey of Bideford added not much 
to the night's impressions. The ancient bridge has 
been widened by two side paths, supported on iron 
brackets, which, with the iron balustrade, give it the 
air of a railway bridge. The Bridge Hall, where the 
trustees meet, re-edified in 1758, was done up in 1859 ; 
but the old tapestries remain. The old Guildhall has 
been destroyed ; and the old church, too, except its 
tower. I peeped into the new church, spick and span 
Puginesque with gaudy glass 3 and found morning ser- 
vice going forward, with apparently one worshipper. 
The shops of Bideford are rustic and backward ; the 
one newsroom discoverable was very poor and rude. 
As to my waterside inn, it was civil, comfortable, and 
cheap. 

Two or three miles below Bideford is the bar, and 
the double river loses itself in the wide bay. On the 
right juts out a distant headland ; on the left run the 
long and level rabbit-burrows, faced with a barricade 
of shingles, and at the angle where the hilly south 
shore trends to Clovelly and Hartland Point stands 
the cluster of new houses — a big hotel and two or 
three score of bathing- villas — named ( Westward Ho ! ' 
from Mr. Kingsley's novel. f Kingsley Terrace ' and 
* Kingsley Hotel ' are also to be seen, an embodied 



WESTWARD HO! 197 

fame. Pleasant traces from the said novel remained 
in my own memory : the author has a certain glow 
and entrainement irresistible to youthful readers. I 
like the name ' Westward Ho ' so far as it is a com- 
pliment to Charles Kingsley ; but, unluckily, as a 
topographical designation, it is a monument of bad 
taste. 'Hoe' is a common word in Devon, meaning 
( Height ' (Haut), but in the title of the novel, bor- 
rowed from an old play, f Ho ! ' is an interjection, and 
the temptation to follow up Martinhoe and Morthoe 
with a Westward Ho ! ought to have been resisted. 
The new name is a kind of bad pun. 

From Westward Ho ! (since it must be so), I fol- 
lowed the south coast of the bay, on the edge of its 
clay and pebble escarpment, rough green hills one after 
another shutting out the inland prospect ; on the other 
hand a rough, rocky shore, summer waves rising, 
rolling in, breaking without tumult, and a blue sea- 
line stretched from the dim northern horn of the curve 
to its nearer southern limit, where the coast became 
almost precipitously steep, and was seen, though some 
seven miles off, to be clothed in rich verdure from top 
to base. Something in the distance that might be 
taken for the broken steps of a gigantic stair, at one 
point climbed from the shore and lost itself among the 
foliage, and this was the famous old fishing village of 
Clovelly — a rich name to ear and fancy. Meanwhile 
the bare green hills, and rocky shore beset with solitary 
surges, the wide blue bay with its guardian headlands, 



198 AT BLDEFORD AND CLO FULLY. 

reminded me strongly of another bay by which I once 
rambled — that of Donegal in the north-west of Ireland. 
The two bays are much of a size, the Torridge with 
its bar and sandbanks stands for the Erne ; nor are the 
town and bridge of Bideford altogether unlike, at least 
in position, their ragged Irish cousins at Ballyshannon. 
Moreover, Lundy Island answers curiously to Innis- 
murray. The scenery of the English bay, as a whole, 
is much richer, in its foliaged shores and inland 
glimpses ; that of the Irish is wilder and grander, 
watched by blue mountain ranges and the great ocean 
cliff of Slieve-League, 

Six hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep. 

It struck me, too, that I had noticed some curious 
resemblances in the speech of North Devon to the 
somewhat peculiar accent of English (flat and drawl- 
ing) which is found in part of Donegal, and speculated 
whether a colony from this bay might not have settled 
on that other. Of some such thing as having hap- 
pened in Elizabeth's time I seem to have heard, but 
cannot for the present trace it out. The i say ' for sea, 
e tay ' for tea, and so on, now supposed to mark an 
Irish tongue, are ordinary Devonian. 

In Hibernian English are many old forms of English, 
and many provincial forms, and along with these a 
strong Keltic admixture of words (some translated, 
some not), phrases, and grammatical constructions : to 
these add mistakes and awkwardnesses in the use of 



BATHING. 199 

a foreign tongue, and you have a strange compound, 
deserving perhaps a closer examination than it has yet 
received. An English-speaking Irish peasant, while 
expressing the same meaning, would shape almost 
any sentence whatever differently from a Londoner of 
a similar degree of intelligence and education. 

At Portledge the rocks yielded to a space of sand, 
over which I gladly ran, in Adam's dress, into the 
embrace of the folding waves. The afternoon sun 
sparkled on the wide sea; two merry fishing boats 
danced past under sail. As the embrace of Earth 
invigorated the old giant, so doth the sea renew her 
sons. First, the sense of individuality when you stand 
in the face of earth, sea, and sky, without one husk or 
lending, defenceless, undesignated. Rags or robes, 
purse and credentials, if you had them, are gone. 
Next, the ( reverential fear,' the profound awe of com- 
mitting your helpless self to the terrible and too often 
treacherous potency. A little prayer is never out of 
place. Then the thrilling flash of will — the self-aban- 
donment — the victorious recovery, the triumph over a 
new element — and the glow bodily and mental of one's 
emergence, not soon fading even when the livery of 
servitude, the trammels that remind us of f man's fall,' 
are resumed. 

Among my bookstall gleanings is a volume of 
poems l Studies of Sensation and Event,' by Ebenezer 
Jones, published in 1843. Through its incoherences 



200 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

it shows glimpses of true poetic power ; and how sad 
are such books, children of enthusiasm and hope, born 
to neglect, to oblivion ! The first piece in the volume 
is called ( The Naked Thinker.' Lord Apswern's will 
has a singular provision : 

Let there be lifted from the roof 

Of Apswern's house, a room, 
From every other room aloof, 

And bare as is the tomb ; 
And stripped of all the clothes we wear, 

To aid life's lying show, 
Naked from every influence, there 

Lord Apswern's heir must go. 

He must pass a tenth part of each day in this room : 

Straight into it the sunshine stept 

Stark naked from the sky. 
'Twixt it and the revolving stars 

Did never aught arise ; 
And morning's earliest golden bars 

Its walls did first surprise. 

And here ' he broods, and writes, and raves,' scorning 
the make-believes of the world, but to what particular 
result does not well appear. Among the volumes on my 
foundling shelf, this of Ebenezer Jones's is cared for. 
Some one told me he was clerk in a tea warehouse 
in the City, and that he died poor and disappointed. 
His blank verse has sometimes a Shelleyan impetuosity 
of eloquence, but, like so many a writer, his work wants 
6 backbone.' His mill had little or nothing to grind, 
and ground its own machinery to pieces. One little 
thing of his (preserved in Nightingale Valley), which 
begins ' When the world is burning,' is very striking. 



IN THE DUSK. 201 

He was certainly not a common man. Of high human 
faculty born into this earth in each generation, how 
much is spilt, as it were on the ground — spilt milk or 
wine, for which, when spilt, there is no help. But 
might there not be better arrangements for saving our 
milk, our wine and oil, from this waste ? 

Meanwhile, I have left the shore, whose huddled 
rocks offer little convenience to the foot, and wind up 
a glen or 6 mouth ' to the high road, where I push on 
quickly for Clovelly, full of expectation. The long 
plain road between hedges was adorned and made 
important by my condition of expectancy, and there- 
fore I recall it clearly. I was on the edge of realising 
a place often thought about, never seen. 

The sun had almost set when I turned, on the right 
hand, through a gate and into a dark avenue of trees, 
winding downwards till the sea came through its 
branches, and running round one headland after 
another ; the purple bay on my right through foliage, 
and the great bank of trees on the left. At every turn 
I hoped to see Clovelly, but it was some three miles 
long, this winding way terraced among the slanting 
woods, and the golden clouds had sunk from western 
heaven, and a dark purple dome overhung the darker 
ocean, when two or three glimmering lights far below 
beckoned to me from cottages near the little harbour. 
Venturing a bye-path, it led me to a small opening in 
the woods. The trees, heap after heap, were piled 



202 AT BIBEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

into the stars. At my feet, between precipitous banks, 
a very steep and narrow glen dropped sheer to the 
sea, losing itself in foliage, and among the foliage were 
actually roofs and chimneys, cottages one below an- 
other, holding on somehow to the dangerous slope. 
Far down, the unseen surf was heard gently breaking 
on the beach, and the dim sea rose in front like a mighty 
and mysterious wall. I had been regretting the lack 
of daylight, but now felt glad to be entering Clovelly 
thus. Everything looked very remote and old-world, 
very quiet, very beautiful. A sense of soothing soli- 
tude, of largeness in the lofty woods and wide ocean, 
of pathos in the cluster of ancient cottages, and the 
little street, like a ladder, into which I was about to 
step down, a stranger seeking supper and bed ; all these 
feelings were harmonised and deepened by the dusky 
twilight sky, lit with some faint stars. 

I was afraid of finding Clovelly, famous in picture, 
spoilt, but it has as yet escaped the hand of i improve- 
ment : ' no villas here, no railway, nor even a coach ; the 
street is still only two to three yards wide ; the inn, while 
clean, is properly old-fashioned and rustical. I regret 
to add that I found a pert and careless handmaiden 
and a heavy bill. i There was a very nice lass at the 
inn,' I heard next day, i but she's married, and now it's 
the landlord's niece, and she's too proud for her place.' 
There are lodgings, I understood, where they would 
be glad to harbour you even for a single night. 

' Clovelly Street ' is a very long flight of flag-stone 



CLOVELLY. 203 

steps descending between two irregular rows of cottages, 
in one place passing under an archway house, and then 
dropping more steeply than ever to the little harbour, 
whose pier, built in Richard I.'s reign, puts its arm of 
gray stone round a little fleet of herring-smacks. The 
steep and lofty sea-bank is smothered in woods, from 
shingle-beach to sky. In my bed-room, to which I 
ascended by many stairs, I found a second door, open- 
ing on — the garden, and to this garden one did not 
descend but ascend, and above it were still other gar- 
dens, and above these a dark mass of trees. So like a 
cluster of shore-side nests is this ancient fishing-hamlet. 
Next morning, bright, breezy, and gay, I made some 
acquaintance with the villagers. A girl was scrubbing 
a doorstep, and her skirt (not a fashionable train) 
reached quite across the street. Under the archway 
sat a shoemaker at work with open door, and showed 
all the readiness of his craft for conversation. He 
must have quite a variety of visitors, and takes intel- 
lectual toll of all strangers. e Crazy Kate's House ' on 
the beach, well-known to photographers, has no right, 
he told me, to any such name, which has merely been 
stuck upon it by some idle tourist. From an old man 
who had lived here all his days, I learned that there is 
no doctor in or near Clovelly, ( he couldn't get a 
livin'. ' He himself c had never touched a dose of medi- 
cine.' ' Was Clovelly much altered since his youth?' 
( Oh yes, very much ! the street was new-paved from 
top to bottom, and two new houses built nigh the foot 



204 AT BIBEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 

of the hill.' An elderly woman who takes care of the 
Methodist Chapel (there are many Methodists among 
the nine hundred Clovellians) praised the beauty of 
the Clovelly children, their regularity at school, and 
the pride their mothers had in keeping them tidy. Mr. 
Hook, Mr. Naish, and other painters, were well known 
to the general population, and inquired after as friends. 

Half-way down the street is a sea-captain's house with 
a china bowl in the window, embellished with a ship 
under sail, and the legend f Success to the Mary Jane 
of Bideford,' and here is a favourite lodging for artists, 
and to all appearance a comfortable. The captain was 
at sea when I called, but passes the winter at home. 
It seemed it might be a good sort of life, with its alter- 
nation of adventure with deep home-repose. 

But I must say good-bye, for my part, to the 
beautiful old sea-hamlet. A cart bound for Bide- 
ford market helped me along the miles of road, 
first winding up a long hill; one of my fellow-tra- 
vellers being a girl with a touch of fashion in her 
dress, a Clovelly maiden, now at service in London 
( ( a very black place,' she said), and sent home for a 
month to revive the faded roses in her cheeks. Three 
weeks were gone and had done her much good; in 
another she must return to the Great Smoke — •' A 
pity,' remarked an old woman beside us, { to miss the 
first of the herrin'.' 

But London sucks in people and things from every 
corner of the land. As courtly and inellectual centre, 



MAGNETISM OF LONDON. 20a 

Herrick's wishes pointed to it from Dean Prior, and 
these attractions still belong to it ; but its more widely- 
felt power nowadays is from mere magnitude, the mass 
of money and human needs packed within a fifty-mile 
circuit. Thither gravitate coarse things and fine, are 
sucked in and absorbed, some to their natural uses, 
many to waste and destruction. 

I came into Clovelly at nine yesterday evening, and 
leave it at eight this morning : I seem to have lived 
there about two years. 

In gliding out of Devon into Dorset the landscape 
grows evener and simpler. I leave behind me a 
peaceful region of rich swelling hills, loaded with corn 
and woodland, and deep fertile valleys, with a coast, 
north and south, of verdured cliff and leafy glen, and 
' bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea ; ' old towns 
and old farmhouses ; an easy-going, good-natured 
population of stalwart men and comely lasses ; a state 
of life not yet broken up, though not unaffected, by 
that brute power of monstrous London, that Mountain 
of Loadstone. 



:>^t^£ 



206 AT LIVERPOOL. 



CHAPTER XL 

AT LIVERPOOL, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

The Mersey — Irishism — Americanism — The Docks — Commerce and 
Credit — The British Association — Mr. Huxley on Vital G-erms — Mr. 
Tyndall on Scientific Imagination — Physical and Moral Philosophy — 
Science andKeligion — Liverpool Architecture — Corn Stores — An Emi- 
grant Ship — Poor Streets — Birkenhead Park — In the Train. 

The place where I first touched the shore of England 
was at Liverpool. Awake in my berth in the steamer, 
the perturbation, external and internal, at an end, it 
was delightful to look through the little round window, 
its bull's-eye open to a fresh morning breeze, and see, 
gliding past, the bank of a large river with numerous 
clusters of houses shining in the sunlight — first sight 
of English houses and English land. Seen from deck, 
the broad Mersey sparkled and danced, as though it 
had been a mere holiday river, between the terraces 
and villas of the Birkenhead shore on one hand, and 
on the other an endless line of huge warehouses with a 
forest of masts in front, and here and there a tower or 
a cupola rising from the dark mass of houses behind. 
This was Liverpool. Large ships lay at anchor in the 
stream ; others, of all sizes, sailing or steaming, moved 
every way across the picture. At the great landing- 



IRISHISM. 207 

stage rows of steamships sent their hissing clouds aloft, 
porters and sailors bustled and shouted, and passengers 
kept landing and embarking among heaps of baggage, 
each intent on his own affairs, crossing gangways and 
shifting and shoving to and fro among boys and by- 
standers, while on the pavement above waited the 
jarvies, with uplifted whip, crying i Keb, sir, keb ! ' 
which I set down as my first experience of the true 
native English accent. 

Everything in Liverpool had the freshness of a 
foreign country (though I came no farther than from 
the Irish West), and I noted every point of English 
novelty, and found myself overflowing with a torrent 
of new experiences. 

This was a good many years ago. Revisiting 
Liverpool this autumn, having in the meantime lived 
much in London and the south of England, it is my 
first impression that Liverpool is rather more Irish 
than Dublin. The huge station, slovenly and ill-kept, 
swarms with frowsy interlopers. Porters, coachmen, 
little boys, policemen, accost or answer you, in nine 
cases out of ten, in a rich Emerald brogue. Milesian 
names cover the signboards of shops and market-booths 
— Murphy and Duffy, Donovan and Conellan. Ma- 
guire's l cars ' (even the word cab seems to be almost 
supplanted) are in chief request. The streets abound 
in barefooted, rao*aed children, wrinkled beldames with 
dudeens, stout wenches, loosely girt as Nora Creena, 
balancing baskets on their heads ; unshaven men in 



203 AT LIVERPOOL. 

every variety of old hat lounge at corners ; and if you 
venture into one of those byways which lead out of 
the best business streets, the foul gutters, the flung- 
out refuse under foot, the dangling clothes hung out 
aloft to smoke- dry, the grimy houses, their broken panes 
stuffed with rags, the swarm of half-naked babes of 
dirt and poverty about the open doors, here suckled, 
there scolded by their intensely slatternly mothers, 
the universal squalor mixed with an indescribable 
devii-may-care-ishness, and the strong flavour of brogue 
that pervades the air, will all remind you forcibly (if 
you have ever been there) of that famous i Liberty ' 
which surrounds the cathedral of Saint Patrick. 

The Irishism of Liverpool is a strong (in every 
sense) and all-pervading element: its Americanism, 
though much less marked, is sufficiently noticeable. 
The bio- 'Washington Hotel,' the three-horse omni 
buses trundling and jingling along their tramways, the 
United States journals at the news vendors', the not 
unfrequent negroes, the unmistakable Transatlantic 
intonation which often strikes the ear in public rooms, 
the ' Oysters stewed in the American style,' with many 
other hints, remind one that here is a chief portal 
between Europe and the great West, and indeed the 
wide world. Placards abound of the starting of ships 
and steamers for New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
New Orleans, the West Indies, Valparaiso, Melbourne 
— wheresoever the salt wave washes ; and looking 
down street after street, the vista ends in a crowd of 
masts and rigging. 



THE GREAT SEA-PORT. 209 

Thus, underlying the Irish and the American ele- 
ments, is everywhere visible the general seafaring 
character of the town, whereon rests the mighty line 
of docks and warehouses, and behind these the count- 
less outfitting shops and nautical instrument shops, 
shops of every kind, polyglot hotels and taverns, 
drinking bars (with a glass barrel for sign), lodging- 
houses, sailors' dancing- rooms ; and moreover the 
crowds of comfortable and luxurious villas that 
besprinkle the country for miles round Liverpool, 
inhabited by ship-owners, ship-insurers, corn mer- 
chants, cotton brokers, emigrant agents; &c, &c, men 
with i one foot on sea, and one on shore/ yet to one 
thing constant ever — namely, money-making — and 
therein duly successful ; with the thick fringe of hum- 
bler houses in the immediate suburbs wherein their 
clerks abide. 

Mostly in the filthy heart of Liverpool itself, the 
squalid byways and pestiferous alleys, dwell the dock 
labourers, carters, stevedores, all the grim, hard-handed 
men, white with flour, black with coals, yellow with 
guano, fluffy with cotton, dusty with maize, who are 
hoisting and lowering, heaving and shovelling, dragging 
and hauling, carrying and trundling great bales, boxes, 
bags, barrels, weights of iron bars and pigs of lead, 
mountains of coal, mountains of corn, amid creaking of 
windlasses, rattling of chain-cables, roll of heavy wheels, 
trampling of great slow horses, and busy turmoil of a 
throng of grim human creatures like themselves, in 



210 AT LIVERPOOL. 

that endless range of waterside sheds, with endless range 
of tall stores looking clown across the long narrow street 
full of mud and noise, and over the prison-like line of 
the dock- wall. 

Prison-like and mortally oppressive is this region— 
the huge warehouses, the blank wall, the lumbering 
drays, the heavy weights swinging in mid air : 

What dreadful streets are these I tread ! 
Bales, hogsheads, hang above my head — 

boundless mud, smoke, stench, with perpetual grinding, 
rolling, clattering. Inside the dock gates is some 
little relief — not much : the water is usually foul, the 
ships lie jammed together like bullocks in a market 
pen ; the monotony of the long sheds and long walls 
and long paved causeways, crowded and dirty, the 
drays and horses and grim men and great burdens again 
at every step, the trap-like and ponderous bridges, the 
huge stonework of the docks and piers, the brutal 
and unfeeling bigness and ugliness of every trace of 
power, the uncertainty of getting out by any given 
route (for a bridge may be open or a gate locked), the 
certainty that you have no choice of direction, the 
stagnant water on this hand, the gray wall on that, 
and your sense of the dreary spaces which in any 
case you must traverse to escape — these oppressed me 
years ago, when I first walked in to see these famous 
things, and oppressed me this last time still more dis- 
mally. It was like a nightmare. The very memory 
of it is oppressive. 



COMMERCE AND CREDIT. 211 

Such is part of the machinery of commerce on the 
large scale — a necessary detail in the grand scheme of 
modern civilisation — a department of life and work 
where a Rambler with tastes for the picturesque and 
sentimental cannot reasonably expect much pleasure. 
Would you have no dock for the ship, no wall for the 
dock, no store for the cargo, no hands to move it ? 
Or would you wish to find the long wall painted in 
fresco, and each stevedore with a bunch of violets in 
his buttonhole ? Well, I don't feel easy in my body 
among these grand docks, and will get out of the place 
as soon as I can ; but neither do I feel easy in my 
mind. Suppose our modern commerce, rich and 
mighty • as it appears, should prove some day to be 
based not on sound principles, but on unsound. Sup- 
pose the human race, or any community of it, to 
discover Credit, on which of late all trading trans- 
actions are built, to be not a rock, but a sandbank ; 
Credit, with all its bourses and banks and bills, to be 
in the long run of maleficent effect to men in general 
(while enabling a 'few lucky and astute persons to 
sweep enormous gains into their pockets) — to be on 
the whole a pernicious thing, diminishing happiness, 
increasing misery, a huge loss, not a grand gain, to 
mankind. Commerce now-a-days rests mainly on an 
artificial system of Credit, and is almost synonymous 
with i Speculation ; ' and Speculation in a vast number 
of cases is something very like Gambling. With all 
trading put on a different basis — say a tripod, of ready 

p 2 



212 AT LIVERPOOL. 

money, real securities, personal (not legal) credit — I 
doubt if huge Liverpool and huge Manchester could 
concentrate so much ill-organised human labour within 
their melancholy walls, overdriven when speculation is 
lucky, left to idleness and starvation when speculation 
is out of luck — could gather round them so widespread 
and close-packed, so dark and ugly a multitude of 
ill-fed, ill-taught, filthy, diseased, vicious, helpless, 
hopeless human beings. And I also doubt if this 
concentrating process, as at present effected, be a 
blessing to England and the world. 

If I were Lord Chancellor to-morrow I would frame 
a Bill to abolish all laws for the Recovery of Debt. 
Besides the check upon huge, unwholesome, inorganic 
conglomerations as aforesaid, a vast swarm of useless and 
worse than useless intermediaries in commerce would 
be nipped and suppressed by the no-recovery prin- 
ciple, and honest buyers would get their things purer 
and cheaper. Now they pay for the rogues, and get 
bad things to boot. Half the shops in London would 
shut up — far more than half of the luxury-shops, 
finery-shops, bauble-shops; and those that remained 
would still perhaps be too many. It is a struggle for 
existence among the general body of shopkeepers now,, 
spun out in the individual cases by credit received and 
credit given (debts to come in by-and-by, bills that 
may be renewed for three months longer), and the 
strugglers clutching in their bitter anxiety at all 
possible l tricks of trade,' almost always including 



NO RECOVERY OF DEBT. 213 

adulteration, and very often unjust charges and false 
weights and measures beside. Most of these are non- 
producers ; their sole business is transmission, and. for 
this, I repeat, there are far too many ; and they do 
it dishonestly and expensively — give us worse things at 
higher cost. I will here insert a poem I once addressed 

To an Egg-Merchant. 

What the deuce is your use ? You nothing produce. 

You never lay eggs. Oh, you're a transmitter. 

If A has an egg intended for me, 

He hands it to B, B to C, C to D, 

D to E, E to me — who pay, after A, 

B, C, D, and E, for stopping the way ; 

Eor surely 'twere fitter As egg and my penny 

Changed hands without paying a toll to so many, 

Which terribly docks Farmer A of his gain, 

While of eggs hardly fresh I often complain. 

I don't suppose that a ready-money system would 
reform all the evils of the mercantile and shopkeeping 
world ; but I do believe it would cut across many 
dishonesties, dry up a good deal of waste, and help to 
make life— national and individual — more wholesome. 

The inconveniencies would prove to be mainly 
imaginary. You do not go to a railway station 
without your fare in your pocket. If you have but 
a third-class fare, you do not ask for a second- or a 
first-class ticket. That is the natural and wholesome 
arrangement, and applicable to every affair of buying 
and selling. The number or magnitude of the 
transactions makes no real difference : if you are 
legitimately engaged in large transactions, you will 



214 AT LIVERPOOL. 

find or soon make proportionate means and conve- 
niences for buying and paying as you go. Neither 
would trust {personal trust) fail, within proper limits, 
— which limits, however, would be something very 
different from the present undefined, almost boundless, 
area of ( Credit,' in whose soil and climate Specula- 
tions and Peculations, upas-trees and poison-fungi, 
do rankly grow and flourish, to the great moral and 
physical detriment of mankind. 

Contracts resting on real securities would be dealt 
with by the law as such ; and all bond fide business 
would soon adjust itself and go on without difficulty. 
Certainly mala fide business would be checked, and 
that large department of trade much discouraged 
which is only a kind of gambling ; which elbows fair 
trading out of the field; which produces so many 
compositions with creditors, and ever and anon culmi- 
nates in a ' commercial crisis,' in which multitudes of 
little people suffer who had no part in the ' speculations,' 
while the gamblers very usually set up again ; and 
then perhaps as i trade revives,' they have a run of 
luck, and all goes merrily forward — till the next crisis. 
Details I will leave to the Lord Chancellor of the 
future to work out. 

Meanwhile, here is the huge town — Hibernico- 
American-English Liverpool, seafaring, rough, busy, 
dirty, wealthy. Hither converge in ceaseless streams 
the cotton of America, India, Egypt, the wool of the 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 215 

Australian plains, the elephants' tusks and palm oil of 
African forests, the spermaceti of Arctic seas, the 
grain from the shores of Mississippi, St. Lawrence, 
Elbe, Loire, Danube, Vistula, and many another stream, 
the hides of South America, the sugar, copper, tobacco, 
rice, timber, guano, &c, of every land the sun's eye 
looks upon. Hence radiate to all quarters of the 
globe, bales of cotton goods, linen, woollen, bulks of 
machinery, inexhaustible leather and hardware, salt 
and soap, coals and iron, copper and tin. 

Liverpool at this time, busy as she seems, complains 
of bad times. The docks are full of ships — post 
horses in stable, eating their heads off. Nevertheless, 
Liverpool, portal and caravanserai of the human race, 
is thronged with visitors and passers-through. Ameri- 
cans who have 'been seeing Europe, now homeward- 
bound in the fall, swarm at all hotels, waiting for their 
steam-packets ; and, moreover, the British Association 
is this year holding its seven-day congress in the Town 
of Ships. 

Its presence makes a gala week in such a town as 
Norwich or Bath. Exeter last year was like a house 
made ready for guests, and busied in entertaining them. 
But the Scientific Congress, with its sections and 
savants and skirmishers, hardly quickens the pulse of a 
big, busy place like Liverpool. Ask your way to the 
Reception Room, your answer may be a shake of the 
head. The President himself pushes unnoticed through 
the hasty crowds of Lime Street or Bold Street, and 



216 AT LIVERPOOL. 

his likeness has not supplanted Bismarck or the fallen 
Emperor at the photograph shops. But this apathy 
by no means extended to the hospitalities of Liverpool, 
civic and private; and the Town itself gradually 
became aware, in some degree, of the Association, 
under the influence of the long daily reports and 
comments of the local newspapers, and the splendid 
soirees at St. George's Hall, the Free Library and 
Museum, the Philharmonic Rooms, and his Worship the 
Mayor's two receptions at the Town Hall, embellished 
with a great show of modern pictures, lent by people 
round about. I should not be surprised to hear that 
Lancashire buys more modern pictures than any three 
other counties. At the mayor's entertainments there 
were not only pictures, but a dancing-room and supper- 
room ; St. George's vast hall bristled with microscopes, 
and mechanical models, and electric machines ; at the 
Free Library and Museum costly books lay open on 
the tables, and the admirably arranged and labelled 
collections of natural history, of antiquities, of china 
and pottery, &c, showed well under the brilliant 
gaslights ; while at all these places Music lent her 
charm, and filled the pauses of conversation as count- 
less groups of the white-gloved, fair sex and brown, 
moved about and passed, looked and discussed, greeted 
and parted, and now and again gently indicated to 
each other some notability of the Sections. 

The first general assembly of officers, life-members, 
and associates pro hdc vice, was, as usual, to hear the 



PBOFJUSSOK HUXLEY. 217 

new President's address. It began at eight in the 
evening, and the Philharmonic Hall was crowded. 
It used, I believe, to be the custom to make this 
address a survey of the progress of science in the 
preceding twelvemonth ; but the tendency now is to 
make it deal mainly with the speaker's special line 
of study. Mr. Huxley's was the most special, pro- 
bably, that has yet been delivered ; its subject, vital 
germs — the visible beginnings of organic life in minute 
specks of matter, which can only be seen through 
powerful lenses. 

f The evidence,' sums up our Professor, c direct and 
indirect, in favour of Biogenesis— production of all 
living matter from previously existing living matter — 
for all known forms of life, must, I think, be admitted 
to be of great weight.' Still he is far from saying 
that such a thing as ( A- biogenesis ' — production of 
living from non-living matter — has never taken place 
or never will take place. ( With organic chemistry, 
molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, 
and every day making prodigious strides, I think it 
would be the height of presumption for any man to 
say that the conditions under which matter assumes 
the properties we call " vital " may not, some day, be 
artificially brought together.' 

This form of words — conditions artificially brought 
together — sounds to me vague, and a little misleading. 
What would be i artificial ' here ? There is no mean, 
says Shakespeare, but nature makes that mean. Con- 



218 AT LIVERPOOL. 

ditions are brought together every day under which 
the above result does take place. We trace the chain 
of causes up to a certain pointy and there our means of 
investigation fail us. That by improved appliances 
and closer search we may discover some higher links 
now invisible is possible, and even likely. But what 
then ? Suppose it were found that a certain chemical 
combination is always followed by the presence of vital 
germs, of which no previous trace could be detected, 
would that teach us what life is, or how it comes ? 

Yet by all means let investigation go on : the least 
particle added to the general store of human knowledge 
is inestimable. On the other hand let us remember that 
we have no absolute and final knowledge whatsoever ; 
that we do not know what any kind of substance really 
is ; that after all these centuries, and all our recent 
( prodigious strides,' we have not begun to make the 
slightest approach to a knowledge of the absolute nature 
of things. 

The Professor went on to own himself i devoid of 
any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the 
conditions of its [life's] appearance,' but added that if 
it were given him to look back to the beginnings of 
things, he should expect to be a witness of the evolu- 
tion of living protoplasm from not living matter. 6 I 
should expect,' he said, { to see it appear under forms 
of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with 
the power of determining the formation of new proto- 
plasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 219 

oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, 
and water, without the aid of light. That is the 
expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me 5 
but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no 
right to call my opinion anything but an act of philo- 
sophical faith.' And what is the retrospective expec- 
tation even of a Huxley worth on a point like this ? 

So far as investigation has gone, every living thing 
is found to proceed from another living thing. But 
does the living thing always produce an offspring of 
its own kind (homogenesis), or is the offspring sometimes 
a creature i of a totally different character ' from its 
parent (xenogenesis) ? The tendency of all enquiries 
has been to support homogenesis. The apparently 
unlike forms, animal or plant, are only ( stages in the 
cycle of life of the species.' But here again Mr. 
Huxley has evidently an i expectation ' that xenogenesis, 
not yet demonstrated, will be some day ; that like may 
produce unlike when modifying conditions are present. 
He finds in diseased structures, from corns to cancers, 
' some remarkable approximations ' to xenogenesis. 
6 Under the influence of certain external conditions, 
elements of the body which should have developed in 
due subordination to its general plan set up for them- 
selves, and apply the nourishment which they receive 
to their own purposes.' l A. cancer,' he says, i is only 
morphologically [i.e. only in shape] distinguishable 
from the parasitic worm.' 

Here, again, I must own, my mental track diverges 



220 AT LIVERPOOL. 

perforce from that of the Professor. ( If,' he goes on — ■ 
i if there were a kind of diseased structure, the his- 
tological elements of which were capable of maintaining 
a separate and independent existence out of the body 
[imagine a cancer crawling about by itself — horrible 
thought!], it seems to me that the shadowy boundary be- 
tween morbid growth and xenogenesis would be effaced.' 
Surely there is much virtue in this i if.' Several 
diseases (e.g. sheep-pox and glanders) 'are dependent,' 
he continues, f for their existence \jwii probation?'] 
and then- propagation upon extremely small living 
solid particles, to which the title of microzymes is 
applied.' Do these come by development of imported 
germs, or by modification of the tissues in which they 
are found ? The Professor considers it an open ques- 
tion, and that there are ' equally strong analogies ' in 
favour of either view. With all proper submission, 
I must say the analogies which he has put forward on 
both sides do not, to my mind, appear equally strong, 
but to preponderate very decidedly for the germ 
theory. 

The lecturer ended by describing the meeting as 
gathered together for e the advancement of the moiety 
of science which deals with those phenomena of Nature 
which we call physical' — a hint of grateful sound to 
those who still interest themselves in the metaphy- 
sical — mental — ethical — spiritual (how to phrase it ?) 
i moiety ' of natural phenomena, and who, with some . 
reason, have felt themselves slighted or ignored by the 
savants of the present day. 



THE IRISH GENTLEMAN. 221 

The address of Mr. Clerk Maxwell in Section A 
(Mathematical and Physical Sciences), was imbued 
with a warmer human interest than usual. There was 
blood, too, running through the veins of Professor 
Sylvester's discourse last year at Exeter. The mathe- 
matical ghosts, mental formulae, astonished us with a 
friendly grasp of hand. But, indeed, humour is not 
absent from the works and ways of mathematicians. Pro- 
fessor De Morgan, in dealing with the circle-squarers, 
and Professor Sylvester, with the ' Laws of Verse,' 
have evolved much fun. Nor was Section A at Liver- 
pool without its droll side. The tall Irish gentleman 
(seen at many former meetings) did not fail to be pre- 
sent, who examines questions by no means in the dry 
light of reason. He was adorned with a neck-scarf of 
bright green hue, and a brogue of equal richness. He 
contradicted everybody, and handled questions of 
multiples and co-sines with a fiery eloquence that 
brought to mind the young man of genius (doubtless 
his fellow-countryman) who, in applying for the post of 
warehouse-clerk, stated among other qualifications that 
his style of letter- writing i combined scathing sarcasm 
with the wildest humour.' Mr. O.'s presence cer- 
tainly makes Section A much livelier and more 
amusing for the associated loungers who drop in, and 
ttoe British Association wishes, among other good 
works, to please this large portion of its company. 
So, long life to Mr. O., and may he speak in Section A 
at many a future meeting ! 

Mainly to please its general company, as aforesaid, 



222 AT LIVERPOOL. 

the Association arranges to have two or three lectures 
of a popular or semi-popular character, hors-d'oeuvre, 
not connected with the regular business of the meeting. 
The chief of these was given by Professor Tyndall to 
a very large audience in the Philharmonic Hall. It 
was long and without experiments, and more fit to be 
read at home than listened to amid the difficulties of a 
large public assembly. Still it is always something 
to see a man of note in the flesh, and hear his living 
voice ; and this interest, over and above that of the 
topic and treatment, secured general attention for the 
best part of two hours. With clearness and originality, 
in an easy voice agreeing with his elastic bearing (he 
has lightness without levity — a kind of agile earnest- 
ness, so to say), the Professor threw forth hint after 
hint on the nature of scientific investigation and on the 
directions which it has taken in our own time (illus- 
trating mainly from the study of Light), and connected 
all into a firm chain of thought. The physical basis of 
light f lies entirely without the domain of the senses.' 
How, then, can we get any notion of it ? 

The phenomena of Sound are clearly explained by 
the theory of waves sent by a vibrating body through 
air, water, &c, to the air. 

In the time that sound takes to move one foot, light 
moves about one hundred and seventy miles. How 
account for this astounding velocity ? ( By boldly 
diffusing in space a medium of the requisite tenuity 
and elasticity.' We do so, and find, after the most 



PROFESSOR TYNDALL. ■ 223 

careful investigations, that all phenomena of light agree 
with this hypothesis. In every luminous body there 
is an internal vibration of its atoms ; the atoms shake 
and send waves along the elastic aether which surrounds 
them. 

Well, the sether-waves made by the vibrating atoms 
of luminous bodies f are of different lengths and am- 
plitudes.' In water-waves, amplitude is the height of 
the crest over the trough ; length, the distance between 
one crest and the next. The length of the largest 
light-waves is about twice, and their amplitude about 
one hundred times, that of the smallest. e Turned into 
their equivalents of sensation, the different light-waves 
produce different colours ; the largest produces red, 
the smallest violet.' But the solar pulse sends, along 
the aether, waves of all sizes blended together, like the 
tones in a musical chord, and blended together they 
make the impression of whiteness. Sent through a 
glass prism all the waves are retarded, but the smallest 
ones most ; the waves are separated, and show as sepa- 
rate colours, the series of large and slow making red, 
of small and swift making violet ; and between these 
we can distinguish orange, yellow, green, blue, and 
indigo. When the blended waves, which are white, 
are transmitted or reflected in equal proportions, the 
effect is still of whiteness ; when in unequal propor- 
tions, one or another colour predominates. Now, why 
is the general sky blue ? The light of i the azure 
vault ' comes to us at once from all parts of the hemi- 



224 AT LIVERPOOL. 

sphere. It is reflected light, and not reflected in the 
proportions that produce white. The smaller waves 
prevail. Why ? Suppose in our atmosphere a count- 
less number of minute particles. Light-waves of all 
sizes impinge upon these particles. Red waves to blue 
are as billows to ripples. A larger proportionate part 
of each smaller wave must be scattered — reflected — 
than of a larger ; l and as a consequence, in the scat- 
tered light, blue [is] the predominant colour.' The 
other colours are not absent, but deficient. The par- 
ticles of a cloud being much larger, send back all the 
waves equally, therefore whitely. Now as to f the 
light which passes unscattered among the particles.' 
Losing many of its short or blue-making waves, the 
direct transmitted light is yellowish. When the sun 
is near the horizon, the direct light-waves have a 
greater distance of air to go through — meet more and 
more of the particles which scatter their shorter waves. 
The particles c abstract in succession the violet, the 
indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of 
green.' The transmitted light ( must pass from yellow 
through orange to red.' Thus by reason and imagina- 
tion combined we represent our atmosphere as ' a me- 
dium rendered slightly turbid by the mechanical sus- 
pension of exceedingly small foreign particles;' and 
the phenomena certainly occur as if this theory were 
true. [ f Turbid ' and i foreign,' however, seem scarcely 
happy terms.] 

Let us see (goes on the Professor — but I am not 



EXPERIMENTS IN LIGHT. 225 

using his words save where the inverted commas ap- 
pear — let us see whether small particles can ' be really 
proved to act in the manner indicated.' Dissolve 
mastic in alcohol. Drop the solution into a glass 
vessel filled with clear water. Water cannot dissolve 
mastic, so the mastic separates into e an exceedingly 
fine precipitate/ a crowd of minute solid particles, 
and lo ! the clear water becomes sky-blue. The par- 
ticles of mastic are so small that the highest micro- 
scopic power shows nothing in the water, and if they 
were each y-ooVoo' °^ an ^ ncn * n diameter they could 
not escape detection. Another experiment : place in 
a dark room a glass vessel with sulphurous acid gas 
( f two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute 
the molecule of sulphurous acid') ; pass a beam of sun- 
light through the gas ; ( the components of the mole- 
cules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the 
sether-waves ; ' the atoms of sulphur float released. 
[We must remark that the Professor here speaks of 
* molecules ' as composite bodies made up of c atoms ; ' 
whereas he elsewhere uses ' atom ' and i molecule ' as 
convertible terms, with the meaning of ultimate par* 
tide.'] At first we see nothing in the vessel, but soon 
( along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue is 
observed.' .... For a time the blue grows more 
intense; it then becomes whitish; and then white. 
At last the tube is filled with a dense cloud of sulphur 
particles, separately visible through a microscope. 
Thus, our asther-waves untie the bonds of chemical 

Q 



226 AT LIVERPOOL. 

affinity. We have first the free atoms of sulphur, so 
minute as to have no visible effect on the light. ( But 
these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles 
which grow larger by continual accretion, until after 
a minute or two they appear as sky-matter. In this 
condition they are invisible themselves, but competent 
to send an amount of wave-motion to the retina suffi- 
cient to produce the fundamental blue.' 

But the particles continually grow larger, and pass 
by insensible gradations into the state of cloud, and 
then the microscope shows them. f Thus, without 
solution of continuity, we start with matter in the 
molecule [atom, Professor?] and end with matter in 
the mass, sky-matter being the middle term of the 
series of transformations.' Instead of sulphurous acid, 
other substances might be used with the same result. 
The skiey condition lasts fifteen or twenty minutes 
under the continual operation of the light, the par- 
ticles constantly growing larger, without ever exceed- 
ing the blue-making size. But as they grow larger, 
the blue becomes lighter. Professor Tyndall found 
the blue of a vapour after fifteen minutes to be ( a blue 
of distinctly smaller particles ' than those sought for 
in vain with a microscope in the mastic precipitate. 
Those mastic particles must have been less than 
TToWo" in diameter. e And now I want to submit to 
your imagination the following question : Here are 
particles which have been growing continually for 
fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are de- 



THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 227 

monstrably smaller than those which defied the micro- 
scope of Mr. Huxley. What must have been the size 
of these particles at the beginning of their growth ? . . . 
We are dealing with infinitesimals compared with 
which the test objects of the microscope are literally 
immense.' 

Take a comet with a tail a hundred millions of miles 
long and fifty thousand miles broad: it is probable 
that the whole stuff of this comet, if compressed, would 
not make one horse-load. As to the quantity of 
matter in the earth's atmosphere — of the particles that 
make to our eyes the deep blue firmament, the whole 
of it measuring say from the height of Mont Blanc 
upwards — all the particles swept up together — would 
probably go into a portmanteau, possibly into a snuff- 
box. All the blue of the round sky in a snuff-box ! 
And these astoundingly minute particles of matter, 
recollect, are by no means the smallest particles in 
nature, but actually bulky and massive compared with 
others which are proved to exist. This gives us a 
wonderful glimpse, at once imaginative and real, of the 
measureless minimism of matter. 

What is the nature of these particles ? A question. 
They defy the microscope and the balance. Many of 
them may be organic germs. Here the professor, with- 
out taking any side in the controversy on Spontaneous 
Generation (affirmed by Dr. Bastian and others), made 
an admirable application to the microscopist : ' edu- 
cated in the school of the senses,' the most minute 

q 2 



228 AT LIVERPOOL. 

forms of life visible through his instrument appear 
f conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter ;' 
. . . . i with him there is but a step from the atom to 
the organism.' But the observer who has also scientific 
imagination, ( exercised in the conceptions of atoms and 
molecules/ discerns numberless gradations between the 
atom and the visible organism. i Compared with his 
atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the micro- 
scopic field are as behemoth and leviathan.' Some 
men of science ' seem to form an inadequate estimate 
of the distance which separates the microscopic from 
the molecular [atomic ?] limit.' e The microscope can 
have no voice in the real question of germ structure.' 
6 Between the microscope limit and the true molecular 
[atomic ?] limit there is room for infinite permutations 
and combinations? 

And does not this seem (thought I) to indicate that 
we have about an equal chance of finding the positive 
beginnings of things in minimis, and the ultimate limits 
of the universe in extenso ? 

Then the lecturer spoke of the well-known nebular 
hypothesis — fiery mist condensing into suns, which 
throw off planets. When first detached from the sun, 
6 life, as we understand it, could hardly have been 
present on the earth. How, then, did it come there ? ' 

And at this point our scientific instructor inter- 
calated a long semi-apologetic reference to the English 
clergy of our day, in London and elsewhere, and their 
attitude towards modern science, declaring (in effect) 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 229 

that he found them personally a polite and even plastic 
body of men, who were not on the whole disposed to 
push their quarrel a outrance. All this kind of paren- 
thetic matter will soon, one may hope, be thought un- 
necessary in a scientific discourse. 

Life (he continued) was either f potentially present 
in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded 
from it by way of natural development, or it is a prin- 
ciple inserted into matter at a later date.' In brief, 
the first is the scientific, the second the theologic 
view ; and those who hold the second call the first 
degrading, debasing, demoralising, destructive — all 
kinds of terrible names. 

Whether or not ( emotion, intellect, will ' were once 
' latent in a fiery cloud,' I must own seems to me, P. 
Walker (whom it concerns as much as another) a ques- 
tion which, however interesting speculatively, is not of 
the slightest practical importance. Man is the highest 
being we know of. He is, somehow or other, what we 
term a spiritual being, but this we cannot explain or 
define. His understanding, imagination, judgment, 
aesthetic sense, moral instinct, will, personal conscious- 
ness, are thoroughly real and effective manifestations of 
his nature ; and it is by and in them that human life, in 
its truly comprehensive sense, really is. Its connec- 
tion with atoms or fiery clouds, whatever mental steps 
may be taken in the direction of establishing it (and 
the complete journey, judging by all experience and 
all intuition, is for ever impossible to us) — that seeming, 



230 AT LIVERPOOL. 

and possibly real connection is, I repeat, of no practical 
importance in any way. Whether we think of man at 
first as moulded at once out of clay, like a sculptor's 
figure, or developed gradually from a fiery cloud, how 
can it make any difference as to our place in the 
universe, our powers, our duties, our prospects? 
People are curious just now about protoplasm, develop- 
ment, spontaneous generation, and so forth ; first, on 
account of the scientific novelty of some of the views 
put forth, and then, I suppose, because they vaguely 
expect some new light upon the nature of the universe 
and the duty and the destiny of man. They had 
better give up every shadow of such expectation for 
good and all. 

The Evolution hypothesis (our Man of Science con- 
fesses it) c does not solve — it does not profess to solve 
— the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in 
facf, that mystery untouched. Its really philosophical 
defenders best know that questions offer themselves to 
thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not 
even the tendency to solve.' 

Often, in the pauses of reflection, the scientific inves- 
tigator finds himself overshadowed with awe — is aware 
of e a power which gives fulness and tone to his exis- 
tence, but which he can neither analyse nor com- 
prehend.' 

So ended our Professor, rising for a moment into 
that region which Immanuel Kant declared to be 



WHAT IS 'A PHILOSOPHER' f 231 

6 above all other spheres for the operations of reason,' 
and indeed the only philosophy deserving to be so 
called. The mathematician, the natural philosopher, 
and the logician (says Kant) are merely artists, en- 
gaged in formalising and arranging conceptions ; they 
cannot be termed philosophers. They but furnish 
means. In view of the complete systematic unity of 
reason, there can only be one ultimate end of all the 
operations of the mind. To this all other aims are 
subordinate, and nothing more than means for its 
attainment. This ultimate end is the destination of 
man, and the philosophy which relates to it is termed 
Moral Philosophy. The superior position (he adds) 
occupied by moral philosophy above all other spheres 
for the operations of reason, shows why the ancients 
always included the idea of moralist in that of philo- 
sopher. e Even still, we call a man who appears to 
have the power of self-government, even though his 
knowledge may be very limited, by the name of philo- 
sopher.' 1 These are practical and pregnant words of 
the old German, and worth meditating upon. 

The mysteries of man's spiritual life, science has e no 
tendency to solve.' Nay, far short of this our know- 
ledge stops — even her wings of imagination fail her in 
the inner region of physical nature's profounder subtle- 
ties. We can trace sound-waves and light-waves into 
the auditory and optic nerves ; but when we ask how 
this force is translated into the sensations of hearing 
1 KritiJc der Beinen Vernunft. (Second edition, last chapter but one.) 



232 AT LIVERPOOL. 

and of seeing, Imagination itself does nothing for us — 
gives no least hint of help. We examine in every 
case, not nature itself, but our conceptions of nature ; 
and the very link which connects us as thinkers with 
the world, as we conceive it in thought, is utterly be- 
yond our cognition. Physical science attempts to 
explain by formulas certain facts given by human con- 
sciousness, and the explanations are no more than a 
tracing of connections. The least approach to a 
discovery of origins has never been made. Endless 
curiosity and investigation are proper to man. So also 
are awe, and reverence, and humility. It was Newton 
who compared himself to a child picking up pebbles on 
the shore of the great sea of Truth; and in this he 
only referred, I think, to the extent of comprehensible 
truth, beyond which lie the measureless regions of 
truth incomprehensible to man. 

Theories of Atoms and Motion, Evolution, Natural 
Selection, &c. ; from these vantage points, carefully 
built up of observation and reasoning, we get wonder- 
ful glimpses into the workings of wide physical nature 
in its relations to our intellect. True conceptions of 
cause and effect we also glean here and there, some of 
them applicable most beneficially to the external condi- 
tions of our earthly existence. As to the nature of 
human life, all the accumulated science of mankind up 
to this hour lias not one word to say. 

Let us take heart, then, brethren — do our work, 



MODERN SCIENCE. 233 

gather knowledge, tell truth, say our prayers, be kind 
and helpful to each other, enjoy landscapes and flowers, 
books and pictures, music and poetry, and fear no pro- 
toplasmic philosophies. For my parti believe neither 
Huxley nor Darwin will hurt a hair of our heads. 

Another discourse outside the ordinary business of 
the Association, was Sir John Lubbock's ' On Savages ' 
— a highly pleasant and amusing speaker, dealing with 
matter which he has carefully studied. His theory, 
which might be called an application of Darwinism to 
the history of civilisation, is that all races of men, 
including the most civilised, began, so far as they can 
be traced back, with low and brutish conditions of 
morals and manners ; and this he considers to be, not 
a dispiriting, but a hopeful and encouraging view, as 
showing the unprovability of the human race. 

The work of Modern Science as regards the mixture 
of moral philosophy and mythology which goes by the 
name of religion has been one with that of historical 
and literary criticism — demolition ; troublesome and 
vexatious but necessary work, already we hope almost 
complete. What remains is that the attained results 
be publicly and practically recognised, and that life, 
social and national, should adapt itself to admitted facts, 
getting rid of a huge lumber of individual and incor- 
porated obstructiveness. After this we may at length 



234 AT LIVERPOOL. 

hope for some constructive work on a large scale. 
Obstruction — Destruction — Construction. May the 
era of Construction soon arrive ! 

We cannot roam for ever through a boundless uni- 
verse of vibrating atoms. The human soul (whatever 
the human soul may be — e soul ' is one of the faint 
efforts of language in the region of the inexpressible) 
is as little to be satisfied with ' a vibrating atom ' as 
with i a multiple proportion.' 

What boots it to send our thoughts wandering into 
the empty wilderness of a material world ? What 
wisdom or comfort bring we back into our inner life ? 
Socrates (as Aulus Gellius reports) used very frequently 
to repeat, with an application of his own, a certain line 
from the Odyssey : ' 

fori roi iv /JLeyvapoicri kolkov r a\aQ6v re rervKrai. 
The evil and the good that have "befallen in thy own house. 

Mankind must sooner or later, I am deeply con- 
vinced, come back to a simple faith and trust — personal 
trust in a personal Ruler of us and all things ; finding 
Him first within, not without. 

The meetings of the British Association bring to- 
gether on friendly terms many men who in different 
parts of our own kingdom and in foreign countries are 
seriously and steadily at work in various departments 
of scientific research. Their actual work is done at 

1 iv. 392. 



ADVANTAGES OF THE MEETINGS. 235 

home. But man is a gregarious and social creature, 
and the annual friendly meetings of minds with under- 
standing and sympathy for each other's pursuits must 
be cheerful, stimulating, and beneficial — in expectation, 
in realization, in recollection. Names long familiar on 
paper become animated into living faces and voices, 
with grasp of hand, brotherly greeting, quick exchange 
of thought, and all the magnetism of personal inter- 
course. Doubtless it not seldom happens that a few 
minutes' conversation suffices to clear up year-long 
questions and difficulties, and that many suggestions 
are exchanged, many seeds of thought sown, which 
bear good fruit afterwards. As to the numerous body 
of f Associates,' besides that the pounds are applied to 
useful purpose, it includes a large proportion of people 
of more than average intelligence and cultivation, and 
forms a good transmitting medium between the pro- 
fessional savants and the mass of the general public, 
It is more or less interested, stimulated, electrified (so 
to speak) by the statements and discussions, and by the 
atmosphere of scientific enquiry. The newspapers re- 
port the proceedings from day to day, and call attention 
to the salient features. The town and neighbourhood 
where the meeting is held, and beyond them the king- 
dom, are overspread with waves of influence propagated 
from that central force. They are thought-waves, 
coursing through a medium still finer than the elastic 
asther by which light is carried, and their effect is 
healthful and educative. 



236 AT LIVERPOOL. 

Such is the general impression that remains on my 
mind ; though I confess that often, while the thing was 
going on, the i work ' of the Sections seemed little 
better than busy idleness, and the attitude of the 
audience to be that of loafers and loungers. Nothing 
so hard to judge of exactly as the importance of the 
passing time and what it carries : after a thousand 
experiences we continue to make wonderful mistakes, 
now of over, and now of under-rating. 

Out of the brilliant Hall we pass again into the dirty 
labyrinthine streets of this windy, tarry, briny Town 
of Ships, full everywhere of the indescribable seaport 
briskness and shabbiness on a great scale. In a moment 
of ill-humour I was inclined to describe it thus to a 
Londoner: Take Thames Street and the Docks, set 
Islington behind them, with here and there some huge 
gray stone building of brutal bulk ; put in a great 
deal of dirt and clatter and Irish brogue, and make the 
natives say ' oop ' for l up,' and you have some notion 
of Liverpool. Well, this would not be a fair descrip- 
tion, I admit. The Mersey with its shipping is grand 
in its own way. So in its way (ludicrously unsuitable 
as it is to the place, the purpose, and the climate) is 
that vast Greek temple called St. George's Hall. The 
region of the Exchange has a busy and wealthy aspect 
of civic importance, befitting one of the commercial 
centres of the globe. Considered architecturally, 
however, the Exchange buildings give little delight, 



ARCHITECTURE. 237 

and perhaps the new part of the quadrangle is the very 
worst thing I have yet seen in modern architecture, the 
most pretentiously mean — true cork-cutter's Renais- 
sance. The old part is stately in comparison. The 
central monument wjth its black figures in chains, 
might once have well seemed an allegory of Liverpool 
Commerce supported by Negro Slavery. It used to be 
said that every brick in the town was cemented with 
human blood. To come back to our own day, what 
opportunities are thrown away, what sums of money 
misspent every year, in our modern architectural ex- 
ploits ! Look once more at this new Railway Station 
and Hotel in Lime Street, and wonder by what in- 
genuity of stupidity so huge an edifice, of such costly 
materials and workmanship — fine yellow stone cut and 
fitted to perfection — is contrived to look paltry and 
unsubstantial. 

After these pretentious failures, there is comfort to 
the eye in the great corn stores, based on iron pillars 
of Egyptian girth, rising in storey after storey of 
grain-lofts, broad, lofty, and airy, and enclosing three 
sides of the docks in which their ships lie quiet after 
thousands of miles of stormy water, sending grain, 
grown in California, Canada, or the shores of the 
Danube, up an c American lift,' from the hold to 
the top loft, whence it flows in rivers of maize, rivers 
of wheat, on endless horizontal bands, about eighteen 
inches wide, worked by hydraulic power, to every part 



238 AT LIVERPOOL. 

of the stores. In this great corn warehouse, the 
greatest in the world they say, Liverpool commerce 
showed itself in its most pleasing aspect. It was deal- 
ing with the first of bodily necessaries, man's bread of 
life ; and though the processes (of unlading, cleaning, 
transferring, &c.) were on a great scale, they were 
managed with so much ingenuity and simplicity com- 
bined, worked so smoothly to these ends with a minimum 
of dust and noise, as to give one a comfortable and even 
pleasurable sense of perfect adaptation, such as one 
finds in Xature's own doings. Neither was there here 
any hint of cheating — a suspicion, alas ! which the 
known usages of commerce so often infuse. What 
the baker does, is outside these walls. If corn-dealers 
ever mix good corn with worse — avaunt ! Thou canst 
not say these do it ! JSTo : but it is done, not seldom. 

In another dock I found the i Great Britain,' at first 
unlucky in Dundrum Bay, lucky since in many 
voyages, and now preparing for another, to carry half 
across the globe her 750 passengers and 150 sailors, 
and hoping to come to anchor under the warm summer 
sky of Melbourne harbour a month at least before 
Christmas. Strange reading our ( Christmas books ' 
and picture-papers must be to an Anglo- Australian 
child. And then I had leave to go on board the 
4 Holland,' at anchor in the river just starting for New 
York, and saw the mustering of her emigrants. She 
can carry 1,250 full-grown passengers, all of one class. 



AN EMIGRANT SHIP. 239 

This time she had much cargo, and only 300 passengers, 
of whom many were Swedes and Norwegians, who 
reach England by way of Hull. The sturdy figures, 
and homely, honest, flaxen-haired faces of the Scandi- 
navians, were pleasant to see, telling of steady, un- 
ambitious industry and domestic faith. Yet here is 
the stout miner of Fahlun, or boatman of Saltenfiord, 
or farm-worker of Fossdal, in his big boots and fur 
cap, with his flaxen-haired wife, and flaxen-haired 
boys in woollen night-caps, and girls with long rat- 
tail plaits of flaxen hair, and not seldom with an old 
wrinkled grandmother whose once flaxen hair is now 
snow-white, all bound to the new hopes, new labours, 
and new fortunes of the Great Republic, where laud is 
as yet of less value than men and women. Now and 
again a slim Norse pige steps shyly up to the inspector, 
answering to her name, and hurries past with glad 
smile to join the crowd • for'ad ' who stand watching 
those ( aft ' that have still to pass muster. The 
Government doctor stops any one who has symptoms 
of fever, small-pox, measles, &c, and the master of the 
ship takes care to carry no one whom the American 
authorities might turn back to the Old World as 
obviously unable to earn a living. All on board to-day 
passed with little question, save a boy about four years 
old, who, with his parents and two younger children, 
was forced to wait till all the others were disposed of. 
The child was heavy-eyed, and suspected of measles. 
The poor father and mother — they were from South 



240 AT LIVERPOOL. 

Wales, and seemed scarcely able to speak a word of 
English — sat very doleful in fear of being turned back 
on the threshold to which they had no doubt painfully 
struggled ; and it was a great relief at last when the 
doctor, after turning up the boy's eyelids with his 
thumb, said carelessly, f That'll do — pass on.' I hear 
there are no few Welsh in the United States, and 
they often live grouped together, and continue to 
speak their old Kymric in the New World. A strange 
conglomerate of nationalities — that Great Republic* 
with wonderful power of absorption and assimilation ! 
There were few Irish emigrants in the f Holland,' and 
Liverpool is no longer so much their transit port as it 
used to be, for many of the Liverpool passenger 
steamers to the States call either at Cork or Derry. 
The arrangements of the ship seemed very good as to 
berths, cooking, hospital accommodation, &c, except 
that unmarried women and married couples are placed 
in the same division of the ship — a plan, the Govern- 
ment inspector agreed with me, not free from objection. 
Away slid our steam tender, and soon I saw the big 
ship steadily following her busy puffing tug-boat down 
river, her deck crowded with gazing passengers. 

Less pleasant than the river experience was a walk 
of several hours through some of the worst and poorest 
parts of the town of Liverpool — Scotland Road, Vaux- 
hall Road, and their cross-ways. The names on the 
corners were suggestive of all pleasant things : the 
streets of Meadow, Rose, Arden, Faradise, and then 



FOUL STREETS. 241 

of Chaucer, of Ben Jonson, of Addison (with its 
6 Morning Star ' whisky shop) — irony of nomenclature I 
What foul vistas are these crowded streets ? The 
garments, guasi-washed, which dangle overhead on 
clothes-lines stretched across, draw one's eyes upward, 
and lo, far above the chimneys, through the veil of 
smoke, is evidence of a cloudless blue sky, filled with 
sunshine and sweet air. Below, all is squalor and 
stifle, rags and drunkenness, an atmosphere thick with 
fever. Many Irish are here. At one dirty corner I 
came on the Church of St. Joseph, and I have no doubt 
the priests do their appointed functions diligently and 
fearlessly. Let those thank them who please. Else- 
where was a dirty crowd round a dirty door, with two 
dirty women talking vehemently to a policeman, and 
another policeman bearing down leisurely on the scene 
of action. The shops were mostly for drink, cheap 
provisions, and cheap haberdashery, with here and 
there a petty newsvendor's, in which the f Flag of 
Ireland ' kept company with c Reynolds ' and sheets 
of comic songs. A great many police cases, another 
constable told me, come from this quarter, ( but nothing 
very bad mostly ' (he added with toleration) — i only 
drunkenness and assault.' The Hospitals and other 
charitable establishments of Liverpool are liberally and 
well managed, I believe. I visited the General In- 
firmary and the Nurses' Home connected with it, and 
found them apparently models in their kind* But alas I 

R 



242 AT LIVERPOOL. 

here in Meadow Street and Paradise Street are the 
roots of the evils, ever germinating and spreading. 

After this one wants a little fresh air, so away again 
to the landing-stage and across the broad Mersey, and 
by a mile or two of tramway to Birkenhead Park, whose 
smooth-winding bowery walks and clear pools, and trees 
that now lattice a red and gold sunset — the seeming 
threshold of a purer world — have few this evening 
besides myself to enjoy their peaceful beauty. Re- 
turning after dusk, the ferry steamer shows a striking 
night-picture of the river, dotted with interminable 
lamps stretching eastward and westward, ships at 
anchor with their lights dimly reflected in the dark 
stream, and over Liverpool a lurid gleaming arch, 
Aurora Urbana, the gaseous halo crowning Modern 
Civilisation. 

Next day the triumphal car of that Power carried 
me away from the Great Sea Port. 

We move in th' elephantine row, 
The faces of onr friends retire, 
The roof withdraws, and quaintly flow 
The curtsying lines of magic wire ; 
With doubling, redoubling beat, 
Smoother and ever more fleet ; 

By flower-knots, shrubs, and slopes of grass, 

Cut walls of rock with ivy-stains, 

Through winking arches swift we pass, 

And flying meet the flying trains : 

Whirr gone ! 

We hurry, hurry on ; 

By orchards, kine in pleasant leas ; 
A hamlet-lane, or spire, or pond ; 



IN THE TRAIN. 243 

Long hedgerows, counterchanging trees, 
With blue and steady hills beyond. 
House, platform, post, 
Mash and are lost. 

Smooth-edged canals, and mills on brooks ; 

And granges, busier than they seem, 
Rose-crusted, or of graver looks, 

Eich with old tile and motley beam ; 
Clay -cutting, slope, and ridge ; 
The hollow rumbling bridge ; 

Gray vapour-surges, whirl'd in the wind 

Of roaring tunnels dark and long, 
Then sky and landscape unconfined, 

Then streets again where workers throng, 
Come — go : the whistle shrill 
Controls us to its will. 

Broad vents, and chimneys tall as masts, 
With heavy flags of streaming smoke ; 
Brick mazes ; fiery furnace-blasts ; 
Walls, waggons, gritty heaps of coke ; 
Through these our ponderous rank 
Glides in with hiss and clank. 

And now again we speed our course 

Athwart a busy, peaceful land, 
Subdued by long and painful force 
Of plotting head and plodding hand. 
How much by labour can 
Poor feeble, timid man ! 

f A peaceful land,' I kept repeating to myself, and 
fell a-thinking once more, for every line of thought 
runs thither, of the sad, unpeaceful land within sight 
of our shores ; and of the many bright and amiable 
qualities of the French. Moreover from them began 
the Great Revolution which is still proceeding — to end 
who shall say when ? ( The Great Protest against 

B 2 



244 AT LIVERPOOL. 

Shams.' But shams are not easy to subdue ; again 
and again they revive, and their latest shape has been 
a sham Napoleon. A dull, tenacious, greedy adven- 
turer, trading on a name not belonging to him, is 
allowed to take France, her forty millions of people, 
her money, her armies, and do as he will with these 
for more than half a generation. Was ever such a 
satire on mankind as the mere statement ? The Revo- 
lution was suppressed in favour of money-making, plea- 
sure, and priestcraft. Agriculturist, shopkeeper, con- 
tractor, gambler open or latent on the Bourse, soldier, 
fine lady, and (first and last) cleric, took their soi-disant 
Napoleon, used him, and now they are paying for him. 
Nations must pay, in some shape ; c no credit ' in the 
long run. So ran my thoughts .... But France is 
not killed, and cannot die. Her fine qualities will 
revive, purified, in new men and women, to help the 
world and embellish life in that Better Time which we 
all hope for — some day .... Alas ! she will attack 
Germany again, and — can a nation die? Have not 
many Nations died ? . . . . 

River, ships, docks, landing stages, the big, murky 
town with its struggling and striving, business and 
wealth, ignorance, disease, and vice, charities and hos- 
pitals and free libraries, vile and dark human swarms, 
noble and generous lives — all these, now that visible 
Liverpool also is gliding away from me into the dis- 
tance of space and time (as things are represented in 
our poor thoughts), shape themselves into one memo- 



MEDITATIONS. 245 

rial impression, sombre and pathetic. Poor laborious 
generations of man, blindly working on from day to 
day ! Yet work they must, and leave to the future 
still vaster accumulations — mostly of rubbish, but not 
all. 

So farewell, Liverpool ! for whose present condition 
the lonely bird by the waterbrink, and ' Deus nobis 
haec otia fecit,' are by no means the most fitting crest 
and motto. Kind, hospitable friends by the Mersey, 
all thanks and good wishes. 




246 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

UP THE TALE OF BLACKMORE. 

"VVirahorne — River Stour — Blandford — Sam Cowell — Popular Songs — 
Sturminster Newton — Barnes's Poems— The Dorset Dialect — The 
Peasantry. 

In the spring time f longen folk to gone on pilgrimages/ 
and in that season also I turn often to the poetry 
shelves of my little library. So, stepping into Dorset 
for a two-day walk, I had for a companion a little 
volume of poems ; and many recollected snatches of 
verse, and thoughts about poetry and poets, mingled 
with the vernal delights of those i woods and pastures 
new,' and clear flowing waters. 

The map of Dorset seems peculiarly crowded with 
double-worded names, many of them quaint and enticing. 
Cerne Abbas, Bere Regis, Melcombe Horsey, Mil- 
borne St. Andrew, Winterborne St. Martin's, Stur- 
minster Marshal, Owre Moyne, Winfrith Newburgh, 
Iwerne Courtnay, Froom St. Quintin, Toller Fratrum, 
Wooton Glanville, Mintern Magna, Blandford Forum, 
and a host beside. Here I am at the railway station 
of "VVimborne Minster, viewing with expectation the 
two beautiful towers which dominate the little town. 



WIMBORNE MINSTER. 247 

A long and crooked street, noway remarkable (yet it 
it is always a peculiar pleasure to icalk into a new place 
— you thus take possession of it), led me to the church- 
yard, where the pollard- lindens parallel to the street, 
with boughs interwoven overhead and forming a green 
arcade, yielded glimpses through their thin foliage of 
the central tower of red sand-stone, broad and short, 
with crooked pinnacles at the four corners; its rich 
look enhanced by a growth of ivy rooted high up on 
the south face, embroidering with verdure the inter- 
laced arches of the stonework. There was once a 
spire, which fell 250 years ago. The gray-coloured 
west tower is taller, and of perpendicular gothic. A 
little girl nursing a baby and two or three other 
children loitered in the light-leafy linden arcade ; the 
street was full of spring sunshine and empty of people ; 
one wondered Avhy the shops were kept open. It was 
the middle of the day, the townsfolk at dinner, the 
boys in Queen Elizabeth's grammar-school at their 
lessons. 

I found the north door of the Minster open, and 
entered ; the verger was showing the church to some 
rural acquaintances, and I followed a little way off, 
evading the vexations of a formal guidance. The 
oldest parts of the Church are some 800 years old. 
Steps over a pillared crypt ascend to the choir, and there 
lie hand-in-hand the well-carved alabaster figures of 
a Duke and Duchess of Somerset who left this earth 
450 years ago. His helmet hangs above upon a nail. 



248 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

He died some years after Joan of Arc was burned, 
and while the Duke of York was Regent of France. 
The lid of the tomb was raised not many years ago, and 
this verger looking in saw the two coffins apparently 
perfect, and some cords, supposed the cords by which 
they had been lowered. He showed in the wall aside 
the altar, the piscina, a thing not used by the present 
owners of this costly building. They have lately, 
however, got all the Minster repaired, and re-embel- 
lished, by means of a public subscription, and not 
merely or mainly on archaeologic claims, but in great 
part on religious. 

Our nobles of to-day wear no helmets ; our clergy 
dip their fingers in no piscina ; but we still have dukes 
and huge domains, bishops and great churches. We 
are living strangely in the end of a long period, among 
names and things gray with the crust of antiquity, 
delightful from an antiquarian point of view, and 
retaining, some of them, an aroma of that romance, a 
tinge of that picturesqueness, infused without conscious 
effort into men's doings in certain by-gone times. No 
wonder that these names and things, and the thoughts 
connected with them, should be dear and venerable to 
so many minds. Modern life, public and private, in 
its typical forms, is neither romantic nor picturesque. 
Those who love the ideal in man's life (body and 
spirit) are not well at home in this present time ; they 
belong more to the Past, and to the Future. 

At the other end of the church an old clock-face of 



THE RIVER STOUR. 249 

large size on the wall inside, marked with twenty-four 
hours, showed correctly the passing hour of the new 
spring day by means of a gilt sun travelling round the 
circle. A ball represents the moon and her changes. 
The ancient carven font below was not dry like the 
piscina, but besprinkled from the baptism of two babes 
that morning ; and the brazen water-jug, replaced on 
its old shelf, stood ready to continue its share in the 
mysterious office for children yet unborn. 

To get out of any building, however beautiful or 
interesting, into the open air and free world, is to me 
a pleasant escape. Narrow streets hem in the Minster. 
I first reached the market-place, an irregular open ; 
and then, through bye-lanes, a pretty field-path on the 
west side of the town, where, amidst broad meadows, 
guarded north and south by heavily wooded slopes, 
winds the tranquil Stour, with deep pools, where, 
looking into the transparent water, I could see some 
of the inhabitants, little pike, at feed, who know 
nothing, I suspect, of Wimborne, or Dorset, or the 
South Western Railway, but have their own towns 
and districts and lines of travelling. Two young 
ladies came along the path from the town, sat down on 
the grassy margin close to an island or promontory 
shaded with tall green withies, and began to read 
unknown mysterious books ; it was poetry I felt sure, 
and finer than any I have yet seen in print. Yet 
could I have looked over their shoulder, it would 
doubtless have changed into . . . The damsels 



250 UP THE VALE OF £ LAC KM ORE. 

themselves seemed, in that sunny spring meadow by 
the clear river, more than semi-celestial ; yet already 
their features have mingled irrecoverably with the 
cloudy past. I too had my companion book, the third 
series of Barnes's i Poems in the Dorset Dialect;' 
and the little river, winding down from the Vale of 
Blackmore to meet the waters of the Avon in Christ- 
church Harbour, flows also through the book ; where- 
fore every sunbeam in the real stream was brightened, 
and every shadow enriched. Strolling northward, I 
struck a road which went by a mill among trees and 
hedges, on a clear brook or bourne, the Wim, hurrying 
to join the Stour : and so returned to the town, the 
little market-place with the two old church-towers 
rising behind it, making a picture as one approached. 
At the inn (Laing's) were good refreshments and a 
civil landlady. 

The right-hand window of the railway-carriage 
showed the meadows, groves, and hamlets of Stour 
Yale, and Bradbury Rings (supposed an ancient 
British camp) conspicuous on a hill some miles away ; 
and so brought me to Blandford Forum — otherwise 
called, descending from classic to vernacular, Market 
Blandford. Entering on foot by back streets, I stood 
to admire a not large yet important-looking old square 
house of dark red brick, ivied, and shaded with, tall 
trees growing in a little court-yard. The bricken 
chimneys are of rich design, apparently octagonal, 
with a slender detached pillar at each angle, and a 



BLANDFORD. 251 

double cornice a-top. These chimneys I saw after- 
wards, overtopping other roofs, and found them as 
pleasurable as a fine piece of landscape. This old 
house is the Mayor's, two children tell me, and he has 
often been mayor. Is he a properly quaint old 
gentleman, I wondered, — with an old library, old pic- 
tures, old furniture, old-fashioned hospitality ; loving 
his native town and townsfolk, full of fatherly care ot 
all their interests, lapt round in his age with honour 
and affection ? Might he not possibly send out an old 
servitor to greet the stranger, observed gazing at his 
picturesque dwelling with intelligent and respectful 
interest, and invite him — even me, Patricius Walker — 
to an inspection of the interior curiosities, and a glass 
of old port wine ? Dreams, dreams again ! I have 
already left the old house behind me, and turned into 
the High Street, which has a very different aspect. 

The town of Blandford Forum was burnt down, all 
but a few houses (of which the above-mentioned was 
one) on the 4th of June 1731, and rebuilt mainly by a 
general public subscription. The High Street, there- 
fore, with its solid bricken houses, and large lumpish 
church with urns on the cornice, square steeple, and 
heavy portico, is like a street in Hogarth's pictures. 
Blandford, thus built at a stroke, has more of a town 
look than most other places in this part of England. 
Wimborne, Fordingbridge, Ring wood, are like large 
villages ; and even Salisbury in great part has a vil- 
lage look — the appearance probably of all our towns 



252 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

under the first class, some centuries ago. The Crown, 
a stately inn, and comfortable withal, fronting the west 
end of the High Street, commands a view of Lord 
Portman's rich park, a broad meadow bounded by the 
curving Stour, with lofty bank of trees beyond. This 
Bryanston Park has given name to a London square, 
not far from which are its cousins of Portman, Dorset, 
and Blandford. 

An uphill street led me northward out of the town 
and by a cemetery, and I turned down a little rustic 
lane, where I had never been before and would most 
likely never be again (a singular delight — I know not 
why). There were orchards, and a woody vale to the 
westward, and a gentle cloudy twilight coming on. 
Then I returned to supper at the Crown, in a room 
adorned with engraved portraits of famous musicians — 
composers, singers, instrumentalists, including one of a 
Hungarian violin-player with autograph, a gift from 
the original. What does this mean ? I learn from the 
conversable waitress, that mine host of the Crown is 
himself a professional musician of no small note ; is 
even now at Weymouth, taking part in a public con- 
cert. Having alluded to my stroll as far as the ceme- 
tery, I am asked, Did I see Sam Cowell's grave ? 
e No : who was Sam Cowell ? ' The celebrated comic 
singer, — yes, to be sure, — and how came he to lay his 
bones at Blandford ? The little story was not without 
interest. Among the many curious branches of industry 
which are to be found in the metropolis, is the produc - 



SOXGS OF ZOXBOX. 253 

tion of those slang songs -which are so great an attrac- 
tion in the music-halls, f coal-holes,' i cider-cellars/ and 
other night-resorts of London. As the old ones get 
stale, new are put forward in their stead, jingling the 
topic of the hour in a quasi-comic fashion of their own, 
and hitching into rhyme the latest inventions of cockney 
jargon and buffoonery. Now and again one of them 
makes i a tremendous hit,' the Great So-and-So is re- 
engaged for another month, and soon you may hear the 
children in every rural hamlet throughout the king- 
dom yelling the new slang ditty, fragrant of gas and 
sewerage. The hayfield borrows its lyrics from the 
Haymarket, and on the sea shore if you hear a sailor 
sing, or a fisherman whistle, ten to one it is some 
melody of the Strand, W.C. Often the singers who 
bring these into vogue are the concoctors also ; and to 
be successful in their line they must of course possess 
special gifts ; non cuivis, it is not everybody who could 
make a hit at the Coal- Hole or the Alhambra, much 
less hope to be sent for to amuse lordly and princely 
personages in their palaces. The noted singers are 
generally skilful and telling, and sometimes show 
remarkable neatness and agility of vocalisation, along 
with some real power of comic expression, which could 
hardly be worse applied, for the words are always 
trashy and frequently base. A few years ago, the 
favourite name in the flaring bills of the music-halls 
and on the covers of comic song books was perhaps 
that of Sam Cowell. I have before me a ' Comic 



254 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

Songster/ price twopence, with several of his famous 
ditties, one being s The Ratcatcher's Daughter,' of 
which here is a verse : 

They botli agreed to married be 

Upon next Easter Sunday, 
But ratcatcher's daughter she had a dream, 

That she wouldn't be alive on Monday. 
She vent vunce more to buy some sprats, 

And she tumbled into the vater ; 
And down to the bottom, all kiver'd with mud, 

Vent the putty little ratcatcher's daughter. 

Spoken : — Considering the state of the Thames at the present moment, 
what mustn't she have swallow'd ! 

Doodle dee, &c. 

Her lover, a man who sold ( lily vite sand,' said 6 Blow 
me if I live long arter ! ' 

So he cut 'is throat vith a pane of glass, 

And stabbed 'is donkey arter ; 
So 'ere is an end of Lily- vite Sand, 

Donkey and ratcatcher's daughter ! 

Doodle dee, &c. 



Spoken: — "Well, ladies and gentlemen, arter the two bodies was 
resusticated, they buried them both in one seminary, and the epigram 
which they writ upon the tombstone went as follows : 

Doodle dee ! doodle dum ! 
Di dum doodle da ! 

Let us shut up our song-book, with the remark that 
pain, murder, death and the grave, are very favourite 
ingredients in all these ( Comic Songsters.' But 
humorists of higher rank, the clever Barham and the 
true poet Hood, for example, are by no means guilt- 
less in this respect. 



A COMIC SINGER. 255 

Sam Cowell had constant engagements, and was 
well paid. What more ? Only the common story — 
( unbounded applause/ unwholesome living, drink, 
broken health. Said our host of the Crown one day 
(being up in London, and knowing all these celeb- 
rities) : ( You're not looking well, Sam ; come down 
to Blandford, and we'll set you right again.' Some 
months after which, a ghostly pale man arrived at the 
Crown in the railway omnibus, and this was the 
celebrated Mr. Cowell. The waiter and chambermaids 
regarded him with curiosity ; the stablemen talked of 
him over their beer ; his arrival made more or less 
sensation throughout the town. He was very ill ; 
grew worse and worse ; consumed a bottle of brandy per 
diem, when he could get it ; and was sometimes noisy. 
At length the Crown's hospitality being worn out, 
though not the host's kindness, a lodging was taken in 
the town, and the sick man's wife brought from 
London. He was carried downstairs in an arm-chair ; 
and next and lastly, before many days, his body was 
laid in the cemetery, among these Dorset fields and 
orchards. A little subscription was made for his wife 
and children, and a stone placed over his grave. Some 
well-meaning people had administered ghostly con- 
solation of the usual kind to the poor Grotesque, and 
his last words were, ( Safe ! safe ! ' On his tomb is 
engraved, ' Here lies all that is mortal of Sam Cowell. 
Born April 5, 1819. Died March 11, 1864;' with 
the words of a text — Hebrews vii. 25. 



256 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

During the last seven years or so the most popular 
English songs, as well as I can remember, have been 
these : f The Ratcatcher's Daughter,' ( The Perfect 
Cure,' ( Bob Ridley,' e I'm a Young Man from the 
Country,' ' The Whole Hog or none,' i Paddle your 
own Canoe,' e Polly Perkins of Paddington Green,' 
( A Motto for every Man,' ( Slap Bang,' 'Jessie at the 
Railway Bar,' ( Champagne Charley,' ' After the Opera 
is over,' e Not for Joseph.' This last has, like most 
of them, a catching bar or two in the tune ; the words 
set forth the same subject as ( The Young Man from 
the Country,' and many other ditties — a countryman 
in town who is too shrewd to be taken in, e.g. : 

Then a fellow near whisper' d in my ear — 

'I would the bargain soon close if 
I'd got the cash, but haven't, so buy it for yourself; ' 

I in reply said, ' Not for Joseph ! ' 

The sixth and eighth in our list are vulgar-economic 
(a class by itself); while ( Champagne Charlie,' 
« Slap Bang,' and c After the Opera,' are songs of 
Haymarket life, as inane as they are ugly — unless, 
as a particle of salt, they may be thought to involve 
some coarse satire on the { Young Man about Town.' 

The country is the natural birthplace of lyric 
poetry ; the dwellers in the Big Smoke ought to be 
solaced with sweet songs of wholesome life and nature, 
and not the country contaminated by the ugly selfish- 
ness and. vulgar satire of the city. Town will have its 
slang and its sarcasm, no doubt ; but the preponderance 



OLD AND NEW. 257 

now of ugly town elements in the popular songs of 
the kingdom is one of the unpromising signs of the 
times. { Popular song ' and e slang song ' are almost 
convertible expressions ; and the slang, too, is mean 
and witless. Looking into any old song-book, I fancy 
that I perceive a degeneracy in our own day. The 
standard of taste thirty years ago was not very noble ; 
but compared with that of the present time it seems 
sentimental, romantic, poetic. The influence of modern 
London upon English thought, character, and society 
— here is a fruitful subject for reflection. Whether 
that influence is to be on the whole, and in the long 
run, more for loss or gain, the ill effects are for the 
present more discernible than the good ; and, with the 
Popular Song, many things have become less sweet 
and wholesome than they used to be in more tranquil 
and deliberate times. People used to taste and digest 
their lives, as it were ; now they gulp and bolt them 
unwholesomely. Life individual has the same great 
interests as ever: life social is undergoing great 
changes, and is turbid and sour in its fermentation. 
Railways have acted wonderfully on London and 
England ; so have Continental ideas ; and so, much 
more, have American ideas. 

' Old England' is rapidly becoming a tradition of 
the past — so rapidly that those chiefly interested cannot 
believe their eyes and ears. Will the transformation 
complete itself peacefully — at all events, without fierce 
convulsion ; or must things be worse, and much worse, 

s 



258 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

before they are better ? If all the well-disposed — the 
lovers of good — would only abjure prejudice and pride 
and solemn nonsense and join heartily together, we might 
hope to see the gradual rise of an Anglia Restituta, 
without tedious agonies or violent throes of transition, 
a New Era formed by peaceful agencies of wisdom 
and love, like air and light doing their beneficent part 
on a soil, — not by the fury of volcanic action. 

My own impression is that great London (though 
many its victims) has on the whole a widening and 
liberalising effect on thought. 

Next morning I went by rail to Sturminster Newton, 
an old village with an old church, crooked lanes, small 
rustic shops, and civil people, who looked at the one 
stranger with a natural curiosity; its bye-nooks 
sheltering snug embowered houses, with flower-gardens 
and climbing roses. Passing out at the top of the 
street, I followed a country road ; on my left hand, 
fields sloping to the Stour, and a rich view under 
showery clouds of the vale, with the river winding 
along. Taking shelter from a dash of rain in a poor 
but neat enough cottage, where an old woman and a 
girl were sewing leather gloves — a common employ- 
ment in the district — I asked the old dame about 
Duncliffe Hill, showing her the woodcut of it in Mr. 
Barnes's volume, and trying to awaken some interest 
with regard to the i Poems in the Dorset Dialect." 
But it was impossible for her to conceive that a printed 
book of which she had never heard before could hold 
anything to concern her. 



I 



DORSET POEMS. 259 

My next shelter was under a hedge, where I turned 
over the leaves of my pocket companion. The verses 
were much unlike those of the c Comic Songster.' 
Rural pictures, fresh and pure, their minute touches 
harmonised into a general tone, and their apparently 
artless simplicity concealing no slight mastery of 
execution; the suggested manner of life (sweetened 
by love and neighbourliness) among fields and flowers 
and wholesome country labours — the neat cottage, the 
home vale, the winding brook and bridge, the field- 
path to the church, the tidy wife and dear children ; 
dashes of country fun interspersed ; a sense of rustling 
leaves, flowing waters, lowing cattle, tinkling sheep- 
bells ; with this a gentle humanity towards all 
creatures, and an old-fashioned, homely piety — these 
delightful impressions were renewed as I turned over 
the pages of the little book, pausing here and there 
at sight of some special favourite — i Echo,' or ( The 
Snowy Night,' or i Zummer Winds,' or i The Rwose 

in the Dark.' 

The Kwose in the Da.kk. 

In zummer, leate at evenen-tide, 

I zot to spend a moonless hour 
'Ithin the window, wi' the zide 

A-bound wi' rwoses out in flow'r, 
Bezide the bow'r, vorsook o' birds, 
Ah listen'd to my true-love's words. 

A-risen to her comely height, 

She push'd the swingen ceasement round ; 

And I could hear, beyond my zight 

The win'-blown beech-tree softly sound, 

On higher ground, a-swayen slow 

On drough my happy hour below. 
s 2 



260 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

An' tho' the darkness then did hide 

The dewy rwose's blushen bloom, 
He still did cast sweet air inside 

To Jeane, a-chatten in the room ; 
And tho' the gloom did hide her feace, 
Her words did bind me to the pleace. 

An' there, while she, wi' runnen tongue, 

Did talk unzeen 'ithin the hall, 
I thought her like the rwose that flung 

.His sweetness vrom his darken'd ball, 
'Ithout the wall ; an' sweet's the zight 
Ov her bright feace, by mornen light. 

But the general effect of Mr. Barnes's poetry is still 
more delightful than the expression, however charm- 
ing, made by any of the poems taken separately. It 
is like the effect remaining after a long and pleasant 
day of rambling by rustic ways through a country of 
groves and green flowery pastures, and clear brooks 
and happy cottages, where the wayfarer is regaled 
with home-made bread and sweet milk, and perhaps a 
leaf of strawberries or a plate of red-cheeked apples. 
To some palates, it is true, such simple diet and 
narrow scenes would be unsatisfactory, and few of us 
would choose to be confined to them ; but there are 
many, I hope, to whom a day so spent would yield 
large store of sweet and wholesome memories. Human 
nature is portrayed by our Dorset bard mainly with 
reference to the domestic affections in humble life — 
virtuous courtship, happy marriage, parenthood and 
childhood, filial piety, family bereavements, with 
the village church always in the background of 



MR. BARNES. 261 

the picture, and sometimes in the foreground. The 
author (whose father and grandfather were farmers in 
this rich, soft, secluded Vale of Blackmore, where I 
sit reading his book), came to be, first, a schoolmaster; 
then, in mature life, a clergyman of the Church of 
England ; and is now vicar of the small parish of 
Winterbourne-Came, in his native county (close to 
Dorchester), dwelling in an appropriate cottage 
vicarage, with his little old church hid in lofty elms 
a mile away, among the green slopes of Came Park. 
A simple, cheerful, wholesome, and happy life is un- 
mistakably reflected in his poetry ; the childhood in 
the farmhouse, the manhood aiming at and at last 
attaining the quiet rural parsonage. With his love 
and practice of poetry he combines a considerable 
research in philology, and prides himself, no doubt 
justly, on using his native Dorset dialect with thorough 
accuracy and purity. 

c To write,' he says in the preface to this third col- 
lection of poems, ( in what some may deem a fast out- 
wearing speech-form, may seem as idle as the writing 
of one's name in snow of a spring day. I cannot help 
it. It is my mother-tongue, and is to my mind the 
only true speech of the life that I draw.' 

Whatever difference of opinion there may fairly be as to 
the propriety of clothing in a provincial dialect thoughts 
and images which belong to general literature, and are 
perfectly expressible in modern English, few, if any, 
will deny the fitness and success with which Mr. 



262 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

Barnes has used the Dorset forms of speech in treating 
purely rustic subjects, like f Not goo hvvome to-night/ 
< The Humstrum/ f Don't ceare,' < What Dick and I 
done/ £ Christmas Invitation,' i The Farmer's woldest 
Daeter/ and especially in dialogues, such as SThe 
Waggon a-stooded/ i A bit o' sly Coorten/ ' Shodon 
Feair/ < The best Man in the Yield/ f A Witch/ and 
many more. For my own part, I am thankful for all 
these poems, just as they stand. In even those which 
are substantially least rural, come in verses and 
phrases that have a new and delightful flavour ; and 
we feel that, as the poet tells us, this is his natural 
mode of speech, in which he was born and bred, the 
ready instrument of his heart and tongue. 

The Dorset dialect, according to our author himself, 
6 has come down by independent descent from the 
Saxon dialect, which our forefathers, who founded 
the kingdom of Wessex in Britain, brought from the 
south of Denmark; 1 it is e a broad and bold shape of 
the English language, as the Doric was of the Greek/ 
e rich in humour, strong in raillery and hyperbole/ 
e purer, and in some cases richer, than the dialect 
which is chosen as the national speech ;' e it retains 
many words of Saxon origin, for which the English 
substitutes others of Latin, Greek, or French deriva- 
tion/ and ( it has distinctive words for many things 
which book-English can hardly distinguish but by 
periphrasis.' As an example of niceties owned by the 
1 Dissertation, in Poems of Bural Life, 2nd edition, 1848. 



DORSET DIALECT. 263 

Dorset, take theas and thik ; these pronouns are not mere 
equivalents of this and that (which are also used), the 
former being applicable i only to individual nouns, not 
to quantities of matter ; ' so that if one Dorset man 
heard another mention ' theas cloth ' and ( thik glass,' 
he would know that a table-cloth and a drinking glass, 
or some such distinct things, were meant ; but ' this 
cloth ' and e that glass ' would convey the notion of a 
quantity of cloth, as in a bale, a quantity of glass, as 
in sheet or in broken pieces. To make use of such 
phrases as { theas milk,' € thik water,' is a common 
blunder of imitators of the dialect, which f is spoken in 
its greatest purity in the villages and hamlets of the 
secluded and beautiful vale of Blackmore.' 

Our poet has written from what he knows and feels. 
As to style, his verse has the essential quality of 
melodiousness, and many Dorset names come in with 
a sweetness that scarcely Val d'Arno could outvie— 
Lindenore and Paladore,Meldonley and Alderburnham. 
His manner of description is minute ; we see the mossy 
thatch, the shining grass-blades, the bubbles on the 
stream, the gypsy's shaggy-coated horse and the 
carter's sleek-haired team, { the cows below the shiady 
tree, wi' leafy bough a-swayen,' the girls' bonnets ' a 
lined wi' blue, and sashes tied behind,' grammer's gown 
pulled through her pocket-hole to keep it from the dirt, 
' a gown wi' girt flowers like hollyhocks.' A thousand 
truthful touches bring his rustic scenes and people 
before our eyes. 



264 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMOEE. 

Some of those critics who prove, if nothing else, their 
own narrow limitations by disparaging one style in art 
to the exaltation of another, or perhaps all others, can 
easily make objections here, complaining of elaboration 
of detail, triviality, want of breadth and loftiness ; too 
much of this, too little of that. But ought the works 
of all artists to be alike ? Do we wish to have every 
picture in a gallery done in one particular style ? The 
great principles of art, you say, are invariable. Yes ; 
but (supposing these to be fully discovered and settled) 
an infinite variety is possible and desirable in the 
application of them. What an artist ought to do, I 
conceive, is that which he finds himself fitted to do and 
delighted in doing. Nor does this imply neglect of 
work, lazy and careless handling : it implies real work, 
the closest, watchfullest, and most thorough execution 
of which the man is able ; ( labour of love ' is the 
effective kind of labour in the world of art. 

To every true-born artist (in words, musical tones, 
forms, colours) working in this spirit, the right attitude 
of the public and of the critics is one of respect. It is 
not that any artist whosoever is to be regarded as above 
criticism, but that we should always keep in mind that 
the true principles and rules of the critics can be derived 
from no other source than the genius of the executive 
artists. Abstract criticism on art is an absurdity. 
The true artist proves that beautiful things, otherwise 
impossible, can be done, by doing them; the intelligent 
critic may then, if he will, and so far as he can 



ART AND CRITICISM. 265 

(thoroughly lie never can), point out the how and the 
why, and thus do service of its kind, helping us all to 
know good work when we see it. The artist, whatso- 
ever his medium of expression or his rank among others, 
is a miracle-worker, literally inspired from heaven, able 
to be an enricher and exalter of human life, and to 
deserve the gratitude of mankind. Happy are they 
whose power of enjoyment sympathises with good art 
of many different styles, with Van Eyck and Rembrandt, 
with Holbein and Titian, with Hogarth and Reynolds 
and Turner, with Greek architecture and Gothic, with 
Phidias and Cellini, with Bach, Mozart, Handel, 
Beethoven, Rossini, and the old harp and bagpipe 
tunes, with ^Eschylus and Theocritus, with Dante and 
Beranger, with Homer and Burns, with Spenser and 
Shakespeare and the Border Ballads. 

But to return to our Dorset friend — his little volume 
(the third of a series of three) was a pleasant pocket* 
companion up the soft, wide, woody-hilled, brook- 
watered Yale of Blackmore, with many a quiet gray 
village and. village-church, and many a snug old 
farmhouse in its 'home ground,' with garden and 
orchard, and rook-nested elms. I have compared a 
reading of these poems to a fine day's walk through 
such a district as this, and in each one sees mostly the 
pleasant side of things. Tinges of gentle melancholy 
are not wanting ; we see aged cottagers at their doors, 
and glance at the inscriptions in rural graveyards ; but 
the ugly pain and disappointment, the sins and struggles 



266 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

of life, lie out of ken. All the better for the delight 
of our day's walk, and perhaps for our pleasure in the 
book also; yet — yet — one can't help sometimes glancing 
or perhaps even prying into the actual daily life that 
underlies these fair pictures. If the peasantry here- 
abouts, old and ycung (thought I), have so warm and 
intelligent a love for the Church and her clergy and 
her ceremonies as the poet indicates, and so pure a tone 
of morals, they must be much unlike any English 
peasantry that I have any acquaintance with ; but this 
reflection was partly of a speculative kind, and one 
that I did not wish to pursue. Presently I come to a 
swing-gate, across a charming shady fieldpath, leading 
towards the church and vicarage of Marnhull, on which 
gate is some pencil- writing, decidedly unfit for publi- 
cation, smacking of the slums of Drury Lane, wofully 
out of keeping with an innocent idyllic scene. And 
here let me recall another little incident which occurred 
to me later in this same county of Dorset, some twenty 
miles farther south. Taking shelter from heavy rain 
in a rather poor cottage, I found an elderly man and 
woman, two grown-up daughters, and two children. 
( Were these grandchildren ? ' l Yes.' Each daughter 
owned one. ' Did they all live in that cottage ? ' ( Yes.' 
6 The daughters' husbands too ? ' 6 They've a-got no 
husbands.' i What ! both widows, and so young ? ' 
6 Na ! th'ant never bin married.' The questioner was 
the only person who showed any embarrassment at 
this answer; and I learned subsequently that there 
was nothing uncommon in the situation. 



THE STONE-BREAKER. s 267 

From Marnhull Church and its noble yew-tree, I 
descended the other side of the hill, and finding a 
stone-breaker sitting at work on a heap of stones by 
the road-side, put some questions to him as to the 
localities. He was not old, but poor and sickly-looking, 
and answered in a slow, confused manner, for which 
he begged my pardon, saying that his head was wrong 
sometimes. I found he was subject to epilepsy, and 
had had a fit that day. He used to live a good way 
off, with his brother, but his brother married, and then 
there was no room for him. He came to this neigh- 
bourhood, and sometimes got a little work on a farm, 
sometimes on the roads. Some days he was not able 
to do any work. He got no parish relief, because this 
was not his parish. He had a place to sleep in at a 
cottage. This poor man uttered no tone of complaint, 
showed no desire to talk of his miseries, nor even any 
recognition of them as such : he had no expectation of 
anything in the world, not even of a chance sixpence ; 
he answered my questions, one by one, neither willingly 
nor unwillingly, but with a certain effort, sometimes 
looking vaguely at me without the least curiosity, and 
all the while chopped slowly and mechanically with his 
hammer. It was another bit of harsh reality. 

My lyrical, idyllic, artistic mood was rebuked and 
abashed. From the bitter weed of that poor man's 
condition, I tried to extract some drops of medicine 
for my own discontents. The mood was abashed in- 
deed, but not shamed ; and so it gradually recovered 
itself, as I walked on by bowery roads and green paths 3 



268 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. 

over Mil and dale, with the Stour, now a rushy, wil- 
lowy brook, twisting hither and thither in the meadows, 
through the villages of Stour Provost (pausing to 
admire an ancient house smothered in ivy), and East 
Stour ; till Duncliffe Hill, i the traveller's mark,' rose 
on my right hand, and a wide rich prospect, extending 
into Wiltshire, opened in front Again seeking shelter 
from a sudden shower, I tried to interest the people of 
the cottage in my volume of Dorset poems, and read a 
comic piece to them, but to little purpose ; the good wife 
at first thought my object was commercial, but finding 
I did not want to sell the book, she knew not what to 
think, and retired into herself. 

At Gillingham, a long straggling street, I dined, 
and stepped into the train for Salisbury. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

Salisbury — Old Sarum — Stonehenge — Wilton House — Bemerton — - 
George Herbert's Life and Poems — His brother, Lord Herbert. 

Arrived at Salisbury, I left my bag at an inn, made 
straight for the Close, turned a corner, and there, from 
greensward carpet, behind a light veil of budding elm- 
boughs, the gracious old warm-gray Cathedral (with 
its long centre-line, two transepts, lancet-windows, 
lofty tower and spire) sprang light, perfect, musical. 
Evening sunshine glowed upon the grass and on the 
elm-tops, where high-church rooks were cawing by 
their nests, and on the warm old red-brick domiciles of 
the dignified clergy ranged round the sacred precinct, 
and spread lights and shadows over the great edifice, 
without disturbing its harmonious unity. More solemn 
buildings I have seen, more stately, more fantastic, 
more rich ; none so elegant. 

The verier who showed me round the interior next 
morning had the air of mild superiority and gentle 
dogmatism which characterises the higher specimens of 
his order, and delivered his routine information with a 



270 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

very creditable air of impromptu. The building is all 
of one period, and in one style (called c Early English '), 
say 1220-50, except part of the tower and the spire, 
which were added some years later. The vast weight 
of these has pushed askew some of the sustaining pillars 
and arches. The great interior has a bare and cold 
aspect ; but the chapter-house, with its quaint bas- 
reliefs from Scripture, is newly done up in bright 
colours. Under the shadow of his cathedral, on its 
west side, stands the Bishop's palace in its pleasure- 
grounds, and the gray pile, with cloisters and chapter- 
house, takes new aspects of beauty rising between and 
above the flower-shrubs and foliage. 

Apart from this its jewel, the city of Salisbury is 
not to be ranked as a striking place ; yet it is quietly 
pleasant and interesting. It stands on a flat among 
trees, chiefly elms, with low sloping green hills on 
every side, between which wind the clear waters of the 
Avon and its tributaries, irrigating bright green pas- 
tures, full of sheep. The quiet, homely streets, with 
here and there an ancient gable-front, or gateway, 
have rather a village than a city aspect. There are 
two or three old churches, of ( perpendicular ' gothic, 
and an old market-cross, with buttressed arches, the 
whole in shape like an imperial crown. Nearly every 
street shows you a green hill or grove at its end, and 
here and there comes a glimpse of fresh-flowing waters, 
with a mill, a bridge, a group of willows or poplars. 
Footpaths lead through gardens and cottages into the 



THE CATHEDRAL. 271 

open country ; and at every turn you see once more 
the tapering stem and spire with bands of stone diaper- 
work and airy cross. I recollected Mr. Pecksniff, 
who is said to have* lived hereabouts, and his views of 
Salisbury Cathedral tf from the north-east, north-west, 
south-south-east,' &c. ; and now, being at Salisbury, 
I perceived that the author of i Martin Chuzzlewit ' 
had never been there up to the time of his writing that 
novel; at least, the topography of the book (if it 
matters) is so far entirely wrong. 

In the wide market-square, whereto flows the pro- 
duce of many a Wiltshire and Hampshire farm (for 
the market, long an important one, has been much 
increased by the railways) stands the Court House, 
and in front of this the statue of Sidney Herbert — 
black, bareheaded, gigantic, in frock-coat and trousers, 
on a hideous light-gray granite pedestal of the modern 
British pattern, rectangular, with ill-proportioned 
cornice, lumpish and scraggy at once. Why are such 
things done? Who likes them? Could we not, in 
the matter of pedestals, at least follow some good 
model ? The garish, many-coloured tomb in the 
Cathedral to a late major of volunteers aims at 
richness, as the Herbert monument at simplicity, and 
equally, as it seemed, without success. 

I cannot help fancying that Wilts is a county of 
more gentle and kindly manners than its neighbour 
Hants. High people and low, at the railway and 
the inn, shopkeepers, children, rustics, all were good- 



272 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

natured and obliging. I well remember, in my first 
days in Hampshire, how rude and insolent I thought 
most of the people. The South Wilts accent, too, 
sounded quiet and mild, and without that self-asserting 
drawl of { Ya-a-as ! ' and ' JSfau-au-o ! ' From the talk 
of the children in any place one can soonest catch the 
flavour of the local speech. 

Famous Old Sarum surpassed my expectations. I 
looked for a bare green mount, with half-obliterated 
entrenchments, a ' rath ' on large scale, scarce distin- 
guishable from the surrounding fields ; but the great 
terraced hill is a marked and grand object in the land- 
scape ; beautiful, too, in the unbroken sweeping curves 
of its grassy mounds, and the grovy crest of its inner 
foss — a dell of coppice wood mixed with larger trees. 
The outer foss you find to be huge and deep, a narrow 
vale between two steep grassy slopes ; and from this 
to the inner circle stretches a broad, green, level space. 
Here and there, too, remains in its old place some 
fragment of flint-built wall ; but the largest is so 
undermined by the picking of visitors and idlers that 
to all appearance it may tumble any day. A little 
modern masonry applied in time would preserve it. 
In the central space the grass is heaved and sunk in 
little mounds and hollows, where lie buried the foun- 
dations and low fragments of the castle, and of that 
ancient church whose proud successor in the valley lifts 
in view its lofty head ; one day, sooner or later, to come 
into the same condition — ( for nothing may remain.' 



OLD SARUM. 273 

Sarum, Soi^biodimum, Latinised form of a Celtic 
name, is usually translated, ' The Dry Fortress ; ' but 
another, and perhaps better interpretation, is ' Service- 
tree Fort.' At all events, the wild service-tree, or 
sorb, still buds in the new spring sunshine on this hill 
— the stronghold in turn of Ancient Briton, Roman, 
Saxon, and the modern Boroughmonger — for, as every 
one knows, till some thirty years ago, two members 
represented in Parliament the blackbirds and fieldmice 
who had long been the only inhabitants of this green 
city. 

The words of another living poet (of firm worth, 
but unshowy, and whose voice is for the present 
drowned by the street-cries of pseudo-poetry and 
pseudo-criticism) came into my mind : 

I have stood on Old Sarum : the sun, 
"With a pensive regard from the west, 
Lit the beech-tops low down in the ditch of the Dun,. 
Lit the service-trees high on its crest : 
Biit the walls of the Eoman were shrunk 
Into morsels of ruin around, 
And palace of monarch, and minster of monk, 

Were effaced from the grassy-foss'd ground- 
Like hubbies on ocean they melt, 
Wilts, on thy long rolling plain ; 
And at last but the works of the hand of the Gelt, 
And the sweet hand of Nature remain. 1 

Quitting with reluctance the lonely city, I walk 
northward by a long path from field to field, which 
leads me to the edge of a steep green slope, and see 

1 Lays of the Western Gael, &c, by Samuel Ferguson. Bell and 
Daldy, 1865. 



274 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

shining through the vale below a pure silvery river, 
called by the commonest of all Keltic names for flow- 
ins: water — f Avon.' I am now some thirtv miles west 
of the Stour, but the two rivers mingle under the old 
Norman tower of Chris tchurch. Below, as in a picture- 
map, the green Yale shows its villages and farm-houses, 
warm-brown, amid orchards and home-groves, its mills 
and willows and little islands, under the varying sky of 
spring. From river pastures and sloping hills comes 
the sound of the sheepbells, saying their name in 
German, glocke ! glocke ! glocke ! Then I drop into 
the valley, issuing at last upon huge solitary fields, the 
beginning of the Wiltshire Downs. I am approaching 
Stonehenge, one of those things that in childhood we 
hope to see before we die, like Niagara, Switzerland, 
Rome, the Pyramids, a volcano, &c. At Amesbury 
(mere straggling village now, whatever it may have 
been) I found shelter in the inn, where two great men 
once on a time got no milk to their tea (see ( English 
Traits '), and set off again between and through heavy 
spring showers : but these, I think, have some elec- 
tric and vitalising quality ; autumnal or wintry rain 
is an enemy to meet, but vernal rain (if one is in 
health) exhilarates. The road to my object was dis- 
appointingly trim and civil, leading past a park with 
big white mansion, on the site of the ancient abbey ; 
and other enclosed ground. A mile or two further on, 
I found a man, who proved to be on duty. He was 
placed there by the lord of the soil to look after Stone- 



STONEHENGE. 275 

henge, and to see that the expected holiday visitors 
(for it was Easter Monday) did not carry it away — 
bits of it at least, as they were too prone to do. ( And 
how far to the Stones ? ' ' You'll see 'em when you 
turn the corner.' Sure enough there they were: but 
not, alas ! 

A cirque 
Of Druid-stones upon a forlorn moor. 

New macadamised roads cross the long slope of the 
Down, a newish farm-house crowns the ridge, a new 
and formal grove of fir-trees intrudes its wedge below. 
At the Stones I found only one visitor, essaying a 
pencil sketch from under his umbrella. He had long 
desired to see Stonehenge, he told me, had come down 
from London on purpose by an excursion train, and 
was going back early the next morning. He was a 
plain little man, apparently of the mechanic class, and 
disclosed no other interesting qualities ; but his having 
made this holiday-journey alone and with such an object 
was interesting, and I misliked the rain more for his 
sake than my own. 

I was not particularly impressed in any way by the 
famous Stones. Similar things I had seen elsewhere, 
smaller, but not a whit less charged with antique mys- 
tery. There was no new sensation here; and the 
immense notoriety of the place made one feel (as 
sometimes happens) rather sulky and captious. As tc* 
wondering at the size of the rudest ones, upright and 
athwart, that is childish. So it is to wonder even at 

T 2 



276 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

the Great Pyramid considered as a bulk of building, a 
performance of which any commanded swarm of men 
are capable, with the aid of a few common tools and 
mechanical appliances. That man can impart beauty 
to his work — beauty from the same Divine source that 
fills every atom and veinlet of the universe with en- 
chantment — here, it seems to me, is something worthy 
of wonder and awe. If the sudden sight of Salisbuiy 
Cathedral sends a thrill through one's body and soul 
(as through mine it did) it is not because so many cut 
stones have been laboriously lifted into the sky. A 
sentence of Shakespeare, a strain of Mozart, carries 
the same effect — a celestial thrill, from the recognition 
of Beauty. The Great Pyramid has acquired respec- 
tability and even solemnity from its vast age; but 
surely it is but a stupid brutal bulk after all, and must 
weigh like a nightmare on the spirit of the gazer. 

Forgive me, Old Druidic Circle ! (if such thine 
origin) — think me not unfeeling. Fain would I wander 
again and often, by sun and moon, among thy tall 
gray stones, where they stand in rude pillars and por- 
tals, or lie confused upon the sward — at some fit hour 
perhaps to receive a vibration from the uncouth and 
solitary presence. 

The walk back to Salisbury, by path and road, and 
margin of willowy Avon, was wet and long. Next 
day I saw Wilton House, without much result; the 
housekeeper showed a large mansion with pictures and 
busts far too many to look at, a great room with Van- 
dyke portraits, and windows viewing the lawns and 



BEMERTON CHAPEL. 277 

groves of a handsome park. Such places make one 
sad ; all the appliances of life in perfection and over- 
abundance, to such little purpose, great parks and 
pleasure-grounds and palaces kept up at huge cost, for 
the owners to yawn in and run away from. Not far 
oif rises the gaudy New- Anglican church, built a few 
years or months too soon, for it represents a phase of 
opinion (or pseudo-opinion) out of which the founders 
by-and-by took their departure. 

On my road back to Salisbury was a more interesting 
church, a little old ivied building, about the size of a 
cottage, with steep roof and small leaded panes ; and a 
plain old little rustic interior. This was Bemerton, 
George Herbert's chapel of ease, and familiar house of 
prayer ; and they brought me the key from the par- 
sonage across the road, which was his parsonage. This 
little old church, or chapel, is now shut up, but will 
not, let us hope, be destroyed. 

Barnes's poems are full of natural rustic piety, Her- 
bert's reflective and didactic. A simple attachment to 
Mother Church appears unobtrusively in the Dorset 
vicar's poetry — a spire peeping in a rural landscape. 
Our Wiltshire priest is loftily clerical. This clericalism, 
while it deprives Herbert of the wider influence which 
belongs to wider poetry, attaches to him a certain 
special class of admirers ; and some of his wise thoughts 
and terse admonitions are not easily forgotten by any 
reader ; for, as he himself says, ' A verse may find him 
who a sermon flies.' 

My own thoughts certainly run a good deal on 



278 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

poetry and poets, especially in spring-time. No few 
people, 'as I know very well, think this a frivolous sub- 
ject ; perhaps they are right. All I can say for my 
part is, that I took to it very early in life (in infancy, 
I may say), out of pure love, and it still retains my 
affection. ( The holy incantation of a verse ' comes 
often into my mind ; many a verse, fitting many a 
mood, soothing or heightening it. I can remember, in 
a thousand cases, the ipsissima verba of the poets, 
which carry their own music, and waft besides an 
aroma of delightful associations. Many of the objects 
that occupy men, even the grave and dignified, seem 
to me, on the other hand (I must own it), frivolous 
enough. Not that I have not often had qualms about 
poetry, whether it were not a delusion ; but I have 
always come back to faith in it, and a firmer faith. 
George Herbert was no mighty man, yet his thoughts 
and moods, being embalmed in musical w T ords, do still 
live. Many are in my own and ether memories ; and 
whoso needs his book has but to ask for it in a shop. 

I saw in Salisbury yesterday in a second-hand 
bookseller's a good copy of another writer's folio, also 
connected with this place ; the volume containing the 
6 Arcadia,' e Defence of Poesie,' and l Sonnets.' The 
preux chevalier, good at sword and pen, being at Wilton 
(but not in this present house, which Inigo Jones 
built), wrote his romance of ( Arcadia ' to please his 
sister, wife of Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and to fill 
up some of the hours of an exilement from Court. 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 279 

When Sir Philip Sidney, years later, and then only 
thirty-two years old, was fatally wounded at Zutphen, 
Edward Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury, was a child of three years, whose brother George 
did not come into the world until seven years after 
this. 

Of George Herbert, no important yet not an insignifi- 
cant or uninteresting human being, I have a clear 
little picture in my head, which has formed itself since 
I saw his parsonage and chapel. Men and events, I 
confess, are to me vague and shadowy, scarce half- 
believed, until I can place them distinctly. At Paris, 
Napoleon the First became real to me; at Weimar 
Goethe. 

The younger son of a high old family, always of 
delicate health, shy and studious, but lofty and hot- 
tempered, George Herbert was brought up and 
guarded with the most anxious care (even after he had 
attained to manhood) by a pious and prudent mother, 
his father having died when the boy was but four years 
old. He was born in Montgomery Castle in 1593, 
and spent his childhood f in sweet content ' under the 
watchful eyes of his mother and the tuition of a chaplain. 
When about twelve years old, he went to Westminster 
school, i commended to the care ' of Dr. Neale, Dean 
of Westminster, and by him to Mr. Ireland, the head 
master ; and by his ' pretty behaviour ' there seemed 
plainly to be f marked out for piety.' The words between 
inverted commas I cull from good Izaak Walton. 



280 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

About his sixteenth year, being a king's scholar, he 
was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge ; and his 
mother procured Dr. Neville, Master of Trinity, to 
take the youth i into his particular care, and provide 
him a tutor.' She had before this time accompanied 
her eldest son Edward (afterwards Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury) to Oxford, and there taken up her abode 
during four years, ( to see and converse with him 
daily,' and so, by the methods of love and good example, 
prevent his falling into vice or ill company, in which 
she happily succeeded. In his first year at Cambridge 
we find George writing to his mother, s my poor 
abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to 
God's glory,' he finding the heathenism and lightness 
of the poets of the day very contrary to his mind. He 
encloses two sonnets : 

My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee 

Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did burn, 
Besides their other flames ? Doth Poetry 

Wear Venus' livery ? only serve her turn ? 
Why are not sonnets made of thee? and lays 

Upon thine altar burnt ? cannot thy love 
Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise 

As well as any she ? Cannot thy dove 
Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight ? . . . 

The second sonnet ends thus : 

Why should I women's eyes for crystal take? 

Such poor invention burns in their low mind 
Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go 
To praise, and on thee, Lord, some ink bestow. 

Open the bones, and you shall nothing find 
In the best face but filth ; when, Lord, in thee 
The beauty lies in the discovery. 



GEORGE HERBERT. 281 

These verses of the boy show in an unusual degree 
all the characteristics of his maturer writings : a decided 
talent for writing in verse, some imagery, a certain 
subtlety and vivacity of thought, a tendency to con- 
ceits ; and the whole pervaded by a genuine piety, but 
of that sort which feeds itself with contempt of all mere 
natural beauty and pleasantness, valuing them only as 
matter for a sermon or a hymn. 

In the same letter George speaks of his ( late ague; ' 
and he seems to have spent the most part of his life 
under sufferings from one or another kind of sickness. 
In person he was i inclining towards tallness,' ' very 
straight,' and ( lean to an extremity.' He was a strict 
student, and in 1615, being then in his twenty-second 
year, became M.A. and fellow of his college. ' The 
greatest diversion from his study was the practice of 
music, in which he became a great master.' If his 
friendly biographer can find in him any error, it is that 
e he kept himself too much retired, and at too great a 
distance with all his inferiors ; and his clothes seemed 
to prove that he put too great a value on his parts and 
parentage.' And here I must add a touch to the 
portrait, from his brother's autobiography i 1 ( He 
(George) was not exempt from passion and choler, 
being infirmities to which all our race is subject ; but, 
that excepted, without reproach in his actions.' This 
tendency, however, we may be sure, was well controlled 

1 Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself. 
London, 1770 ; p. 12. 



282 SALISBURY AND BE MEET ON. 

and subdued, and only lived in him in later life as a 
warm, religious, and virtuous vehemency. In 1619, 
aged twenty-six, he was chosen Orator of the University, 
and held that office for eight years with high credit. 
He was not insensible, as his letters prove, to the glory 
of it, nor was the salary of 307. sl year unacceptable. 
Though of high family, his allowance was not large, 
and in an interesting letter to Sir John Danvers, his 
mother's second husband, written in 1617, more than 
a year after his gaining the fellowship, he writes : 1 1 
want books extremely,' especially books of divinity, and 
wishes to raise a sum on security. i "What becomes 
of your annuity ? " Sir, if there be any truth in me, I 
find it little enough to keep me in health. You know 
I was sick last vacation, neither am I yet recovered ; 
so that I am fain ever and anon to buy somewhat 
tending towards my health, for infirmities are both 
painful and costly. ... I am scarce able with 
much ado to make one half-year's allowance shake 
hands with the other.' 

The Orator's first great opportunity was in writing 
a letter of thanks to King James {Serenissime Domine 
noster, Jacobe invictissime!) when that learned monarch 
enriched the University with a copy of his invaluable 
book entitled ( Basilicon Doron.' Our orator finished 
off thus : 

Quid Vaticanam Bodleiananique objicis, Hospes ? 
Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber. 

Talk of the Vatican, Bodleian,— stuff ! 
Here in one Book we've library enough. 



GEORGE HERBERT AT CAMBRIDGE. 283 

( This letter was writ in such excellent Latin, was 
so full of conceits, and all expressions so suited to fehe 
genius of the king ' that he made inquiries regarding 
the Cambridge Orator and began to notice him ; whence 
George conceived great hopes of court favour, and 
trimmed his sails accordingly. After this, Herbert 
engaged in some pen-combats with one Andrew Melville 
(a good honest man, it appears) minister of the Scotch 
Church, and rector of St. Andrews, who f had scattered 
many malicious and bitter verses against our liturgy, 
our ceremonies, and our church-government.' Melville 
being summoned to a friendly conference of clergy at 
Hampton Court, so much offended the king, that he 
^as deprived of his rectorship and shut up in the Tower 
of London, ' where (saith Izaak) he remained very 
angry for three years.' There were short methods in 
that day of dealing with too troublesome controversial- 
ists. Herbert wrote ex officio Latin epigrams against 
Melville, but not very bitterly. Among the memorials 
of this part of his life we have a very long letter of 
George's written from Cambridge to his mother, then 
lying in sickness ; from beginning to end a sermon-like 
composition and much too proper. 

When King James came a-hunting to Newmarket, 
he often visited Cambridge, ' where his entertainment 
was comedies suited to his pleasant humour ; and 
where Mr. George Herbert [though theoretically re- 
garding all these things as dust and ashes] was to 
welcome him with gratulations and the applauses of 



284 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

an orator.' He was rewarded with a sinecure of 120/. 
a year, the prebend of Lay ton Ecclesia in the diocese 
of Lincoln, the same which Queen Elizabeth had 
formerly conferred on Sir Philip Sidney; and being 
thus richer, i he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes, 
and courtlike company, and seldom looked toward 
Cambridge unless the king were there, but then he 
never failed.' He had often desired to leave the 
University, but continued, at his cautious and careful 
mother's wish. Finding the parish church of Layton 
Ecclesia in a ruinous condition, the conscientious pre- 
bendary (though warned by his mother, l George, it is 
not for your weak body and empty purse to undertake 
to build churches ') re-edified it, with the help of 
subscriptions from his kinsmen and friends. His 
mother, who after twelve years' widowhood had mar- 
ried a brother of the Earl of Danby, died in 1627. 
In 1629 George, suffering from ague, removed to the 
house of his brother, Sir Henry Herbert, at Woodford 
in Essex, where (according to Walton) he cured him- 
self of that disease by eating salt meat only, but 
brought on ( a supposed consumption ; ' and therefore 
he moved again to Dauntsey in Wiltshire, the house of 
Lord Danby. Here his health and spirits improved ; 
and he declared his resolution both to marry and to 
enter the priesthood. 

He was now about thirty-six years of age. Having 
resolved to marry, he had not long or far to seek for a 
wife. Mr. Charles Danvers of Bainton, Wilts, a near 



GEORGE HERBERTS MARRIAGE. 285 

kinsman of Lord Danby, and an old and attached friend 
of George Herbert, had ( often publicly declared a desire 
that Mr. Herbert would marry any of his nine daughters 
— for he had so many — but rather his daughter Jane 
than any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter.' 
When George came to Dauntsey, Mr. Danvers was 
dead ; but George and Jane met, and each having heard 
much commendation of the other, they agreed without 
many words, and were married ' the third day after 
this first interview.' The true friends to both parties 
who brought them together e understood Mr. Herbert's 
and her temper of mind, and also their estates,' so well 
before their interview that the suddenness was justi- 
fiable by the strictest rules of prudence. Their short 
union was' a happy one; their ( mutual content and 
love and joy did receive a daily augmentation, by such 
daily obligingness to each other as still added such new 
affluences to the former fulness of these divine souls, as 
was only improvable in heaven where they now enjoy it.' 
About three months after this marriage the living 
of Bemerton became vacant, and was offered to Mr. 
Herbert. He, dreading the responsibility, now that it 
came close to him, considered on it for a month, fasting 
and praying often, and sometimes almost resolving to 
give up both priesthood and living. In the midst of 
these spiritual conflicts, Mr. Woodnot, an old friend, 
coming to visit Mr. Herbert, they went together to 
Wilton House, King Charles and the court being then 
at Wilton or Salisbury. Mr. Herbert thanked his 



23G SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

kinsman the Earl of Pembroke for the offer of the 
living, at the same time declining it ; but Dr. Laud, 
Bishop of London, who was with the Court, came and 
reasoned with George on the subject, and did i so con- 
vince Mr. Herbert that the refusal of it was a sin, that 
a tailor was sent for to come speedily from Salisbury 
to Wilton to take measure, and make him canonical 
clothes against the next day; which the tailor did: and 
Mr. Herbert being so habited ' was immediately in- 
ducted (he was already a deacon) into the living of 
Bemerton and Fugglestone. When at his induction 
he was shut into the church, ( being left there alone to 
toll the bell, as the Jaw requires him,' he remained 
so long: that Mr. Woodnot looked in at a window and 
( saw him lie down prostrate on the ground before the 
altar.' He was setting himself rules of life (as he 
afterwards told his friend) and vowing that he would 
labour to keep them. That same night he said to 
Mr. Woodnot, ' I now look upon my aspiring thoughts, 
and think myself more happy than if I had attained 
what I then so ambitiously thirsted for.' 

When King James looked so favourably on him, 
Herbert is thought to have aspired to be made a 
Secretary of State. He accepted at last the humble 
position of a country clergyman, not without effort, 
and carried all through a certain self-consciousness 
in his humility and piety, which however were 
very genuine. Having 'changed his sword and silk 
clotbes into a canonical coat,' and thus returned to 



THE NEW PARSON. 287 

his wife at Bainton, he said to her, f You are now 
a minister's wife, and must now so far forget yonr 
father's house as not to claim a precedence of any 
of your parishioners,' &c, to which she cheerfully 
agreed. Going over one day to Bemerton about 
repairs of the church, the new rector met a poor old 
woman who began to tell him her troubles, as poor 
old women do, but through fear and shortness of breath 
her speech failed her, whereupon Mr. Herbert i was so 
humble that he took her by the hand, and said, " Speak, 
good mother ; be not afraid to speak to me; "' &c, and 
gave her both counsel and money. Telling this to 
his wife when he went home, Mrs. Herbert ( was so 
affected ' that she sent the poor old woman a pair of 
blankets with a kind message. All which was very 
kind and pretty, but scarcely enough to account for 
the rapturous manner in which it is narrated by friend 
Izaak, who remarks : e Thus worthy, and like David's 
blessed man, thus lowly, was Mr. George Herbert in 
his own eyes, and thus lovely in the eyes of others.' 

The rector repaired the parish church (which is not 
called Bemerton, but Fugglestone, and stands near 
Wilton), and almost rebuilt the parsonage at his own 
charge. He also improved the little chapel of ease of 
Bemerton (which I visited), just across the road from 
his parsonage ; and in this appeared twice every day at 
church prayers, f strictly at the canonical hours of ten 
and four,' with his wife and three nieces (the daughters 
of a deceased sister) and his whole household. 



283, SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

I wish I knew what Mrs. Herbert was like : I can 
see the tall, thin, straight figure of the rector, with a 
long, mild, serious face, somewhat pale and hollow- 
cheeked ; and hear his grave tones, with a cough now 
and again, l which makes me sorry.' ( If he were at 
any time too zealous in his sermons,' it was in reprov- 
ing those worshippers, and those ministers too, who did 
their part in the divine service in an indecorous or 
hasty manner; and he took great pains to expound 
the meaning and value of all the appointed forms and 
ceremonies and set times of the Church. ' His constant 
public prayers did never make him to neglect his own 
private devotions,' nor family prayers, which were 
always a set form, and not long, ending with the collect 
of the day. 

Yet Mr. Herbert in these matters came much short 
of his friend and correspondent, Mr. Farrer, of Little 
Glidden, near Huntingdon (ex-fellow of Clare Hall, 
Cambridge), who, besides all possible Church prayers, 
fasts, vigils, &c. &c, had an oratory in his house in 
which praying and reading or singing of psalms was 
kept up continuously, day and night, for many years, 
the members of his family keeping watch and watch ; 
and s in this continued serving of God, the Psalter or 
whole Book of Psalms was in every four and twenty 
hours sung or read over, from the first to the last 
verse.' l This Mr. Farrer, sometimes called the 
Protestant Monk,' died in 1639. 

1 Walton. 



MUSIC AND CHARITY. 289 

Mr. Herbert's chief recreation was music ; he com- 
posed many hymns and anthems, and sung them to his 
lute or viol. He usually attended twice a week the 
cathedral service at Salisbury, and afterwards went to 
a private music-meeting in the city, at which he 
was one of the performers. One day, in his walk to 
Salisbury, the rector saw a poor man's horse fallen 
under his load, and helped the man to unload, lift, and 
reload his beast : l at his coming to his musical friends 
at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George 
Herbert, which used to be so trim and neat, came 
into that company so soiled and discomposed ; but he 
told them the occasion.' One of them seeming to 
think that the rector ( had disparaged himself by so 
dirty an employment,' Mr. Herbert made a proper and 
somewhat elaborate little speech (unless Izaak has 
made it for him), saying that certainly it was not 
pleasant to do; but that he felt he had acted con- 
scientiously ; the thought of it ( would prove music to 
him at midnight,' and he praised God for the oppor- 
tunity — ( and now let us tune our instruments : ' an 
anecdote which has a certain comic colour not intended 
by good Mr. Walton. Both he and his wife were very 
bountiful to their poor parishioners ; and when a friend 
advised him to be more frugal, he made a speech (ac- 
cording to Izaak) ending thus: i Sir, my wife hath a 
competent maintenance secured to her after my death ; 
and therefore this my resolution shall, by God's grace, 
remain unalterable.' 

u 



290 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

In fact, as to the external conditions of life, Mr. 
Herbert had an easy time of it all through, though at 
one period he found his allowance hardly enough to 
admit of his purchasing all the books of theology 
which he desired. This easy and secure life, from 
birth to death, a contemplative introspective habit of 
mind ( f he would often say he had too thoughtful a 
wit '), a sickly body, and a temperament that inclined 
him in all things, both physical and mental, to order- 
liness, punctuality, and primness, go far to explain his 
character and the form into which his religious aspira- 
tions were moulded. In addition, he had that melodious 
faculty which expressed itself both in music proper and 
in verse, and which makes him interesting. 

Nothing, I think, can be more erroneous than to 
look on poetical writings as mainly fantastic and trivial. 
They delight us by their happy and melodious forms ; 
but we are also attracted by their sincerity. In the 
works of a true poet, be his rank what it may, you 
find an expression — freer than he could elsewhere 
venture — of how he was impressed by life. In verse 
the poet (a choice kind of man) declares his best self: 
if you know how to look, you will find the essence of 
his love, his faith, his hope and fear, his strength and 
weakness. Herbert, in his prose ( Country Parson,' 
cannot write one free sentence, nor even in a letter to 
his friend or his mother; he is sophisticate to the 
marrow. In his poems, precisian as he still is, a 
larger wisdom shines out here and there ; c the glory 



VALUE OF POETRY. 291 

of the sum of things ' declares itself ; he rises at 
moments out of formal into universal religion. 

The good rector held his parish less than three 
years. The seeds of early death were in him. One 
usually thinks of George Herbert as an elderly man, 
from his grave look and reputation ; but he was only 
forty when he died. When much weakened by con- 
sumption he continued to read prayers twice a day in 
the chapel close to his parsonage ; but at last was 
persuaded by his wife to allow his curate to take that 
duty, he himself attending as a hearer as long as he 
could. About a month before his death be was visited 
by a clergyman, one Mr. Duncon, bringing a brotherly 
religious message from Mr. Farrer, of Glidden Hall. 
Mr. Herbert lay on a pallet, weak and faint, and asked 
Mr. Duncon to pray with him, in e the prayers of my 
mother, the Church of England : no other prayers are 
equal to them;' and Mr. Duncon ( saw majesty and 
humility so reconciled in his looks and behaviour,' as 
begot i an awful reverence.' 

His old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from 
London to Bemerton, and never left him till the end. 
On the Sunday before his death he rose suddenly from 
his couch, called for one of his instruments, and 
having tuned it, played and sang a pious verse. 
' Thus,' says Walton, ( he sang on earth such hymns 
and anthems as the angels, and he, and Mr. Farrer, 
now sing in heaven.' On the day of his death, his wife 
and nieces e weeping to an extremity,' he entreated 

v 2 



292 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

them to withdraw to the next room and there pray for 
him. After murmuring some pious words he breathed 
his last, i without any apparent disturbance ;' and 
Mr. Woodnot and the curate, Mr. Bostock, closed his 
eyes. 

The quaint biographer remarks : ( If Andrew Mel- 
ville ' — he who was in the Tower for three years 
very angry — ( died before him, then George Herbert 
died without an enemy.' 

Izaak Walton, by the way, was a London tradesman, 
fond of reading, and his holiday amusement angling. 
His wife's brother, being a clergyman, rose to be Bishop 
of London. Izaak's social dignity thus came to him 
through the Church ; and his mind, loving literature, 
ran also continually on Church men and matters. 
After retiring from business he wrote ( The Complete 
Angler,' and the lives of Wotton, Donne, Hooker, 
Sanderson, and Herbert, and won himself a little 
niche. 

As to George Herbert's writings : he left behind 
him e The Country Parson ; or, Priest to the Temple,' 
containing his own rules, which at his death came in 
manuscript into the hands of his friend Mr. Woodnot ; 
and poems, under the title of ' The Temple,' which, 
being on his death-bed, he sent in manuscript to Mr. 
Fairer to be made public or not, according to that 
friend's opinion. In his college days he had written 
some Greek and Latin poems, not remarkable. 

The first words of i The Country Parson ' plainly 



HIGH CHURCH 293 

indicate the author's point of view. ( A pastor is the 
deputy of Christ ;' and a few sentences down we find, 
' Christ .... constituted deputies in his place, and 
these are priests.' In the divine services he hears the 
sins of the congregation. He i exacts of them all 
possible reverence ' and observance of the forms of 
worship. Those who do not attend church, or habi- 
tually come late, must be ' presented.' He must fast 
on Fridays. He is to give much to the poor, but 
chiefly to those who can say the Creed, &c. The 
church is to be carefully kept, and at times ( per- 
fumed with incense.' He must persuade the sick or 
otherwise afflicted f to particular confession, labouring 
to make them understand the great good use of this 
ancient and pious ordinance, and how necessary it is 
in some cases.' ( Those he meets on the way he 
blesseth audibly.' ' The Country Parson is in God's 
stead to his Parish, and dischargeth God what he can 
of his promises. Wherefore there is nothing done, 
either well or ill, whereof he is not the rewarder or 
punisher.' ( He exacts of all the doctrine of the 
Catechism ;' 6 that which nature is towards philosophy, 
the Catechism is towards divinity.' f The Country 
Parson being to administer the Sacraments, is at a 
stand with himself — how or what behaviour to assume 
for so holy things. Especially at Communion times 
he is in great confusion [or perturbation] as being not 
only to receive God, but to break and administer 
him.' The Churchwardens are 'to present [i.e. lodge 



294 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

an information against] all who receive not thrice . a 
year ; ' and also ( to levy penalties for negligence in 
resorting to church/ &c. ( The Country Parson de- 
sires to be All to his Parish ; and not only a Pastor, 
but a Lawyer also, and a Physician. Therefore he 
endures not that any of his flock should go to law ; 
but in any controversy, that they should resort to him 
as their Judge.' i If there be any of his flock sick, 
he is their Physician, or at least his wife.' If he or 
his wife have not the skill he is to maintain relations 
with some practitioner, who is to act with and under 
the parson. ( If there be any of his parish that hold 
strange doctrines,' he e useth all possible diligence to 
reduce them to the common faith.' ( It is necessary 
that all Christians should pray twice a day every day 
of the week, and four times on Sunday, if they be 
well. This is so necessary and essential to a Christian 
that he cannot without this maintain himself in a 
Christian state.' Prayers beyond this are i additionary ;' 
and the Parson, in this and other matters, is to point 
out the distinction between i necessary ' and e addi- 
tionary ' duties. f Neither have the Ministers power 
of blessing only, but also of cursing.' 

Our excerpts sufficiently indicate the idea in Mr. 
Herbert's mind of a country parson's right position and 
duties in the world. That such notions are based on 
erroneous principles, and are impossible to carry into 
practice, it seems needless to point out. Yet we see 
that the vicar ofBemerton does to this day by no means 



HERBERTS POETRY. 295 

lack successors in this line of thinking. With all this 
are mingled in his book many wise and subtle thoughts, 
and a continual inculcation of holiness of life, love 
and humility, as the parson's best weapons — weapons 
wherewith Mr. Herbert himself was nobly armed. 

And now let us turn to his poetry, without which 
his memory would have but a slight interest. George 
Herbert's little book is alive after two centuries. He 
wrote the verses from and for himself. They are 
religious musings. No human figures or incidents 
appear in them ; there is but himself and his God. 
The world of nature only serves to illustrate his 
spiritual relations. He has a l heart in pilgrimage,' 
and his life is a prayer ; all day long he feels the 
great Presence — ( If I but lift mine eyes, my suit 
is made.' When — such as all men must have — 
he has times of forgetfulness, or unfaith, he flies back 
into contrition : 

But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild 

At every word, 
Methought I heard one calling ' Child ! ' 

And I replied, ' My Lord ! ' 

Many are his acknowledgments of sin ; not expressed 
with fear of punishment (he nevQr speaks of hell in 
the vulgar sense, and he says that ' devils are our sins 
in perspective '), but with deep awe and humble con- 
trition, and a pleading that he may not be deprived of 
his Father's love and care. Here is a very tender 
little religious poem : 



296 SALISBURY AND BE MEET OK 



Love. 

Love Lade me welcome ; yet my soul drew back, 
G-uiltie of dust and sinne. 

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack 
From my first entrance in, 

Drew nearer to me ; sweetly questioning 
If I lack'd anything. 

' A guest,' I answered, ' worthy to be here — ' 

Love said, ' You shall be he.' 

' I the unkinde, ungratefull ? Ah, my deare, 
I cannot look on thee.' 

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, 

' Who made the eyes but I ? ' 

' Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them : let my shame 
Go where it doth deserve.' 

' And know you not,' sayes Love, ' who bore the blame ? ' 
' My deare, then I will serve.' 

' You must sit down,' sayes Love, ' and taste ray meat : ' 
So I did sit and eat. 

Herbert has many a beautiful verse and stanza of 
universal religion, strains of meditation, aspiration, or 
holy tranquillity ; but his piety and poetry have 
clothed themselves for the most part in those special 
dogmatic forms by which he set so much store. He 
often runs into quaint conceits and oddities ; yet in 
his purer and simpler moods he sometimes attains an 
unusual happiness of expression, at once easy and 
terse : 

"What skills it, if a bag of stones or gold 

About thy neck do drown thee ? raise thy head 

Take starres for money ; starres not to be told 
By any art, yet to be purchased. 

Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree ; 
Love is a present for a mighty king. 



CHOICE LINES. 297 

There are frequent touches of practical wisdom, such 
as these : 

When thou dost purpose aught within thy power 

Be sure to doe it, though it he but small ; 
Constancie knits the bones, and makes us stowre, — ■ 



"Who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself. 

Envie not greatnesse : for thou mak'st thereby 
Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater. 

Be not thy own worm. Yet such jealousie 

As hurts not others, but may make thee better, 

Is a good spurre. 

Look not on pleasures as they come but go. 

His verses bloom out here and there in true and deli- 
cate beauties, like little flowers among grass : 

I made a posy while the day ran by : 



But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they 
By noon most cunningly did steal away, 

And wither d in my hand. 

I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, 
The hillings and the relishes of it ; 

The propositions of hot blood and brains ; 

What mirth and music mean ; what love and wit 
Have done these twentie hundred years and more. 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

The bridal of the earth and skie : 
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; 
For thou must die. 

But the three other verses of this poem are very 
inferior, save this one line : 

Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses. 

Among the best pieces are the allegorical — as 



298 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

e Peace ' ( f Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell ? '), 
and the f Pilgrimage,' — reminding one of Bunyan ; 
and the moral-meditative poems, as i Constancie,' 
c Employment,' ( Man ' ( f Man is one world and hath 
another to attend him'), f Mortification ' (' How soon 
doth man decay '), ' Miserie,' ' Providence.' 

Altogether, George Herbert's character, views, life, 
and writings are easy to understand. Of kind nature, 
shy temperament, and sickly body, refined fancy, 
meditative mind, and tender conscience, receiving 
careful and seclusive training — domestic and scholas- 
tic ; timidly conservative in all his ideas, seeing eveiy- 
thino- through the medium of his Church, and hearing 
(most characteristically) ' church bells beyond the 
stars,' such was the vicar of Bemerton. We seem to 
have seen the tall thin consumptive man, mildly 
grave and ceremonious, scarce middle-aged yet old- 
looking ; to have heard him reading the Church 
prayers in a hollow solemn tone, or repeating a few of 
his own verses in the parsonage garden, or playing 
some little sacred air upon his lute, by a window com- 
manding a distant view of the spire of Salisbury 
Cathedral. There were doubtless few dry eyes among 
those parishioners who followed the coffin to the parish 
church of Fugglestone, when George Herbert's body 
was laid under the altar. 

Mr. Herbert had no children. ( His virtuous wife 
(says Izaak) continued his disconsolate widow about 
six years, bemoaning herself and complaining that she 



LORD HERBERT. 299 

had lost the delight of her eyes,' &c. ( Thus she 
continued mourning till time and conversation had so 
moderated her sorrows that she became the happy wife 
of Sir Robert Cook, of Highnam, in the county of 
Gloucester, knight.' . . . ( Mrs. Herbert was the wife 
of Sir Robert eight years, and lived his widow about 
fifteen ; all which time she took a pleasure in men- 
tioning and commending the excellencies of Mr. 
George Herbert.' This, however, one can imagine to 
have now and then become tiresome. f Lady Cook 
had preserved many of Mr. Herbert's private writings, 
which she intended to make public, but they and 
Highnam House were burnt together by the late 
rebels.' 

George's eldest brother (Lord Herbert) says, in his 
autobiography, that i about Salisbury where he 
[George] lived beneficed for many years he was little 
less than sainted.' The time was only about four 
years, and this mistake perhaps indicates that there 
was no very close intimacy. 

Edward, equally or still better guarded by his care- 
ful mother, lived a very different life from George. 
He married at sixteen, had several children, was a 
chivalrous soldier, a learned student, a gallant courtier, 
a wise ambassador, fought duels, travelled and saw 
courts and varieties of life, and wrote philosophical 
treatises that drew the attention of the literati of 
Europe. Yet, different as they were, a family 
character is very perceptible in the brothers. 



300 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. 

In the small quarto edition of the autobiography 
(from Horace Walpole's press) is a large portrait of 
Edward Lord Herbert, lying meditative by a brook in a 
wood, a man in the background holding his horse ; be 
is in full dress of James I.'s time, and by him lies a 
shield inscribed f Magica Sympathia3 ' ( f By the magic 
of sympathy'), and emblazoned with a heart in flames. 
His notions of herbs, cures, and other natural things, 
were like George's. 

Edward was a theist (which is not the same as 
atheist), believing in God, in right and wrong as shown 
by the conscience, and in a future life. His treatise 
6 De Veritate,' in defence of natural religion, excited 
much attention and some attacks. His two Latin 
poems — e Vita' and f De Vita Coelesti Conjectura ' — 
are in substance the most impressive modern Latin 
poems I have ever met. He seems to have cared little 
for English literature, and speaks rather slightingly of 
his brother George's English writings. 

From Salisbury I sped back south-eastward, after 
two pleasant spring days, full of fancies and thoughts. 



• 301 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



AT CANTERBURY. 



St. Mary Overie's — Tomb of Grower — The Tabard — Chaucer and the 
Pilgrims — Sketch of Chaucer's Life — Canterbury — Outside the 
Cathedral — Erasmus — Modern Statues — Augustine — Saturday Night 
— Inside the Cathedral — Harbledown — The Nightingale — New Spring 
and Old Poetry — The Martyr's Pield — Charles the Pirst— The 
Eiverside. 

I carried a couple of American friends the other 
day to one of the most interesting parts of London, 
especially to natives of the new country, and yet a 
terra incognita to many thoroughbred cockneys : 
namely, certain old places on either side of London 
Bridge ; and first to that ancient church, Saint 
Saviour's, better known as Saint Mary Overie's. 
( St. Mary O' the Ferry ' it is usually explained, but 
Stow says i St. Mary over the RieJ or Overy, that is, 
Over the Water, and adds that Mary was a maiden 
who (long before the Conquest) founded a House of 
Sisters here, and at her death bequeathed to it the 
care and profits of the ferry (no bridge being then 
built), as she had inherited the same from her parents. 
The House of Sisters was afterwards changed into a 
monastery, and in place of the ferry a bridge of wood 



302 AT CANTERBURY. 

was built. f But lastly the same Bridge was builded 
of stone, and then, in the Year 1106, was this Church 
again founded for Canons Regular, by William Pont 
de le Arche, and William Dauncey, kts. Normans.' 
By Act of 32nd Henry VIII., the two parishes (says 
Strype) of St. Margaret's and St. Mary Magdalene's 
in Southwark were united, and the Church of the 
Monastery of St. Mary Overy made the Parish 
Church, and called by the name of St. Saviour's. 1 

The choir and transepts are in a surprising state of 
neglect and disarray. The nave was re-built in 1 840, 
and is now an ugly parish church, with prim pews and 
pulpit ; and the fine old carved bosses of the ceiling, 
then taken down, are piled up in an arch or two of 
the choir like a mass of rejected building-materials. 
Everything is dingy and dismal. We found on a slab 
among the rude flagging the name of { John Fletcher,' 
and on another hard by (removed from the church- 
yard) that of ' Philip Massinger.' In a corner of the 
south transept, John Gower's richer tomb occupies a 
recess in the wall ; but it has lost much in interest by 
having been transplanted hither from the chapel on 
the north side where the poet himself had chosen the 
resting-place of his mortal body, and by reason also of 
the gaudy colours and modern Gothic lettering with 
which certain modern Goths have decorated it. How 
hollow our pretence of respecting the wishes of the 

1 Survey of London, &c, by Stow, continued by Strype. London 1720, 
vol. ii. pp. 8, 9. 



ST. MARY OVERIE'S. 303 

dead — even the illustrious dead ! Witness the recent 
burial of the body of Charles Dickens in Westminster 
Abbey, in opposition to his distinct and emphatic re- 
quest to have his grave made at Rochester, in the 
midst of the scenes of his childhood and of his last 
years — scenes for which he had ever a peculiar regard, 
In the latter place, too, the memorial stone would have 
been incomparably more interesting and affecting. 

Many people have a notion that Gower was a pre- 
decessor of Chaucer ; most, perhaps, that if contempo- 
rary, Gower was a good deal the senior. But, as far 
as the evidence goes, they seem to have enjoyed a 
friendship level in point of age and otherwise ; the 
different value of their genius waiting to be tested by 
Time's chemic hand. 

From the fine old church, dishonoured by modern 
hands both in what has been done and what left un- 
done, it is but a step to the Borough High Street, 
with its row of ancient inn-yards, all much alike in 
plan — a gateway leading into a wider space overhung 
with wooden galleries. There are the ( George,' the 
e White Hart,' the ( Queen's Head,' which is the 
trimmest ; but the most famous and the one we have 
come to see is ( The Talbot,' formerly, as the sign tells 
us, e The Tabard ' — the herald's coat having given 
way to the mastiff probably through mere corruption 
of the sound of the word. 

Befell that, in that season [April] on a day, 
In Southwark at The Tabard as I lay, 



304 AT CANTERBURY. 

Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage 
To Canterbury with full devout courage.. 
At night was come into that hostlerie 
Well nine and twenty in a company 
Of sundry folk, by aventure i-fall 
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all 
That toward Canterbury wolden ride. 
The chambers and the stables weren wide, 
And well we weren eased atte best. 
And shortly, when the sunne was to rest, 
So had I spoken with them everyone 
That I was of their fellowship anon. 

How pleasant and fresh sound the old, old lines ! 
And now see a new April day, and pilgrims, from a 
land that even Poet Chaucer never dreamed of, come 
to look, for his sake, at the old Inn ! 

My friends were provided with Murray's ' Hand- 
book to Modern London,' and found, at page 261, 
( Tabard Inn, Southwark, &c. Pulled down.' My 
experience in Guide Books considerably surpasses my 
faith ; still this statement gave me a little qualm, and 
I approached the old gateway with some touch of 
anxiety, and, going through, saw with relief the 
tavern on the rip;ht hand, the old balconies and totter- 
in o- roofs on the left, the stables at the end, all 
remaining exactly as I first saw them, a young poetic 
pilgrim, some five-and-twenty years ago. Perhaps 
nothing in the present edifices can be proved to be of 
Chaucer's time ; but parts of them are several centuries 
old, and the inn in all probability holds the same site 
and the same general plan as in the reign of 
Edward III. Indeed, as far as I can see, we are not 



THE TABARD. 305 

forbidden to suppose that portions may stili be here of 
the very i Tabard ' of Chaucer. 

The yard was full of the clatter and litter of a 
carrier's inn, and half blocked up with huge carts and 
elephantine horses. The balconied part rests upon 
stout oaken pillars, which show no sign of decay ; but 
from the empty and neglected state of the rooms one 
infers that the old edifice is awaiting the harlequin 
stroke of this motley Nineteenth Century of ours. A 
big, carter-like man, who was lounging against one of 
the pillars, handed me the key — 6 You can go up and 
take a look round.' There was nothing to see in the 
nest of little chambers — made, most of them, by parti- 
tions out of one large room, the very room, as some 
enthusiasts declare, in which the thirty pilgrims met — 
nothing save the squalid desolation of a long^forsaken 
house of the humbler sort. It was odd to find sc* 
much waste space within a bow-shot of London Bridge, 
and things can scarcely stay so much longer. When the 
e Talbot-Tabard ' — up to this moment remaining the 
same that it has always been within the limits of 
living memory (only more grimy, perhaps, than it was 
a generation or two back, and these empty rooms were 
then occupied) — shall be really pulled down, and Mr. 
Murray's anticipatory statement becomes correct, 
London will certainly be the poorer by an object of 
interest to readers of English poetry. 

Yet, after all, the supper at which Harry Bailey 
presided was never aught but a dream-supper — the 

x 



306 AT CANTERBURY. 

lively picture of a company which no room ever held. 
Doubtless the ( Tabard ' was a usual starting-place for 
Canterbury pilgrims ; but those pilgrims for whose 
sake we still seek the dirty inn-yard in the Boro' are 
but children of a poet's brain. Out of true material 
indeed he shaped them ; but his the shaping and the 
bringing of them together, twenty-nine representative 
figures from the England of Edward III. Many 
million men and women have passed and left no dis- 
coverable trace, while these fine puppets remain. 

But one feels sure that Chaucer did come to the 
f Tabard/ and see the humours of the place. Our 
American friends, too, have an immense appetite for 
every ( famous thing of eld,' and are the reverse of 
sceptical or captious. No folk so charming to go about 
with in the Old World. Besides their habitual bon- 
hommie, frankness, and obligingness, their curiosity 
and appreciation open the eyes of a native to many 
things not seen because always seen. e Chaucer's 
Tabard,' that is enough ; and whether the old balcony 
is of the time of Edward, or Elizabeth, or the Second 
Charles, matters little, — it is crusted with antiquity and 
perfumed with poetic associations. Let us also take 
the wise part of making the most of our ( Tabard.' 
After all, though the great fire of Southwark, in 1676, 
most likely burned part of the ancient inn, it may 
have spared part. Would any such balcony have 
been newly put up at that time of day ? 

I fancy Chaucer sleeping here, and constructing — 



THE PILGRIMS AT SUPPER. 307 

he, the English ( maker' — out of the dream-stuff of 
which the real pilgrims whom he met were composed, 
his own company of more durable phantoms. And 
thus remain alive for us to this day the honourable 
Knight, the gay young Squire, the sturdy Yeoman, 
the gentle Prioress (who had a nun and three priests 
with her), the lusty fat Monk, the merry Friar, the 
grave Merchant, the learned Clerk, the discreet Ser- 
jeant of Law, the dinner-loving Franklin, the Haber- 
dasher, the Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, the 
Tapisser, the Cook, the Shipman (' with many a tem- 
pest had his beard been shake '), the Doctor of Physic, 
the naughty Widow from Bath, the poor and pious 
Parson, the sturdy Miller, the Ploughman, the Man- 
ciple, the Pardoner, the Reeve, e a slender, choleric 
man,' and the Summoner, with ( fire-red cherubyne's 
face.' 

They all met at supper, with abundant victuals and 
strong wine, the host of the inn, Harry Bailey, at the 
head, no doubt, of the table. He was a large man, a 
seemly, and a manly, bold of his speech and merry, 
but also wise and well-taught. 

Supper done, he makes a speech to his guests, in 
style at once familiar and respectful, proposing to 
accompany their party to Canterbury at his own cost, 
and to act as their guide, and further that, to make 
the journey pleasanter, each pilgrim shall agree to tell 
two stories going, and two more on the way back ; the 

x 2 



308 AT CANTERBURY. 

best story-teller to sit free at another general supper 
here at the ' Tabard ' when all is finished. 

This was accepted ; and next morning, ( when that 
day began to spring/ they all arose, and, being 
gathered in a flock, rode forth at an easy pace, the 
miller playing them out of town with his bagpipe; and 
when they reached the watering place of Saint Thomas 
(at the second milestone, 'tis said, on the road to Can- 
terbury), the host made them all draw cuts, and it fell 
to the Knight to tell the first tale- 
Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, 
There was a duke that highte Theseus ; 

who wedded the Queen Hippolyta, 

And brought her home with him in his countre 

"With much glorie and great solemnite, 

And eke her young sister Emelye. 

And thus with victorie and with melodie 

Let I this noble Duke to Athens ride. 

So will we let the pilgrims ride forward. But that 
return- supper, ordered five centuries ago, has not yet 
been eaten ; indeed, the company never arrived at 
Canterbury, however near they came, and are still — 
men, and women, and horses, in all their fourteenth 
century array — somewhere on the road, ever riding 
forward and telling their tales in turn. 

Nay, this were to wrap the bright procession in too 
dark a cloud of fancy ! Rather let us hold for 
certain that they knelt at the shrine of i the holy 
blissful martyr,' rode prosperously back to London, 
telling many a fine tale on the homeward journey, and 



CHAUCER'S YOUTH. 309 

sat down to a noble supper at the ( Tabard,' at which 
all drank to the best storyteller, by decision of their 
manly host and fellow pilgrim Harry Bailey. Who 
that best was, and what the stories told on the return, 
we shall never know ; inasmuch as the quiet pilgrim, 
rather short and fat, with mild, grave face — which, 
however, had somewhat f elvish ' in it — and who 
usually looked upon the ground, as though he would 
' find a hare,' laid down his pen too soon, and no other 
man could repeat the sayings and doings of the 
company. 

The sum of all the accounts of Chaucer's early life 
is simple and complete as the O of Giotto. Nothing 
is known of Chaucer's early life. We cannot learn 
where or when he was born, or anything authentic as 
to his family or education. The name originally is 
French (spelt Chaucier, Chaussier, and other ways), 
and means shoemaker, or perhaps breeches-maker. 
It is guessed that he was born in London, about the 
year 1328. There are rumours, all baseless, of his 
having been a member of the University of Cam- 
bridge, of Oxford, of the Inner Temple, and beaten 
a friar in Fleet Street. That he somehow received a 
high cultivation, and came into Court favour, is 
certain ; and he appears to have gone to France with 
Edward the Third's army, in 1359, and to have been 
made prisoner ; but he got safe back to England, and 
within a few years took to his wife Philippa, daughter 
of Sir Payne E-oet, and maid of honour to the Queen. 



310 AT CANTERBURY. 

Another daughter of Sir Payne, Katherine by name, 
was of the retinue of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, 
first wife of John of Gaunt. Katherine married Sir 
Hugh Swinford, a Lincolnshire knight, became a 
widow, returned to John of Gaunt's household as 
governess to his children ; he having meanwhile lost 
his Duchess Blanche, and married a Duchess Con- 
stance. After a time, this Duchess also died, and then 
John of Gaunt married the governess, his old friend 
Katherine ; and thus Poet Chaucer, of no family, 
became closely connected by marriage with the 
Royalty of England. 

He and his wife enjoyed various gifts and pensions ; 
and Chaucer was frequently employed in the King's 
service, on diplomatic missions ; for in those days 
kings thought a good brain a useful commodity, and 
were glad to find work for it. In Italy, at the same 
time, the learned Petrarch was busy in state affairs. 

But neither Chaucer nor Petrarch had a public and 
its publishers to depend upon, and little foresaw, with 
all their wit, into what a glorious thing Literature was 
one day to develop itself. If they could have been 
told prophetically of the books, magazines, news- 
papers, &c, that would be produced in London alone, 
in a single twelvemonth, the c capital invested ' therein 
(this phrase would have been a puzzle), and the re- 
venues accruing, it would certainly for a moment have 
surprised them. While on a mission in Lombardy, 
Chaucer is thought to have met Petrarch, that 



CHAUCER'S OLD AGE. 311 

6 learned clerk/ at Padua; and perhaps lie did; but 
there is no proof of it. 

Chaucer filled, moreover, for a number of years the 
office of Comptroller of Customs for the Port of 
London, and was returned to Parliament in 1386, as 
knight of the shire for Kent ; the feeble Second 
Richard, aged 19, being King. Richard wished to 
govern through a clique of his personal favourites* 
Parliament met in October 1386, and impeached the 
King's ministers. At the end of a month of violent 
disputes, the King dissolved Parliament, and Chaucer, 
as one of the obnoxious members, and a connection and 
supporter of the Duke of Lancaster (who was in 
opposition), was dismissed from the Customs' service. 
This at least is the residuum of probability from a 
mixture of various statements. It has often been 
stated that, to avoid the enmity of the Government^ 
Chaucer retired to the Continent, and on coming back 
to England was imprisoned for three years in the 
Tower. There is no real ground for any such state- 
ment ; but it does seem certain that the Poet in his 
old age was ill-off for money, and in 1398 the King 
granted him a protection from arrest. Next year, 
Bolingbroke (son of John of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend 
and connection by marriage), took the crown, and 
immediately granted Chaucer a pension of £26 13s. 4c/. 
a year. 

On Christmas Eve, 1399, the Poet, some seventy 
years of age, and now, let us hope, at ease from 



312 AT CANTERBURY. 

duns, went into a house situated in the garden of 
e the Chapel of the Blessed Mary ' (where Henry the 
Seventh's Chapel now stands), which house he took 
from the Abbot and monks of Westminster, on a lease 
of 53 years, at £2 135. 4td. a year. But he occupied 
it only ten months. He died October 25, 1400, and 
his body was laid in the adjacent Abbey. 

Soon after this visit to the e Tabard,' I enjoyed my 
first sight of the famous old city of Saint Augustine 
and Thomas a Becket. At a curve of the railway the 
three towers of the Cathedral rush into view not far 
off; and here is Canterbury Cathedral. 

Why, I wonder, are all the railway stations in this 
part of England — the rich and flowery Kent — so mean 
and uncared for ? The ( London, Chatham, and 
Dover ' has a blight upon it, which perhaps extends 
to the station-masters, and they are too dispirited to 
plant mignonette or train a rose-bush. The aspect 
of the stations on the London and Hastings line 
(to take one in the same part of England) is very 
different. 

Here is part of the gray city wall, with green 
hawthorns growing out of the bastions, and tall elm- 
trees rising within. That grassy mound at one angle 
bears the odd name of ' Dane John ' — corruption 
probably of donjon, which, by the way, is the same as 
dungeon, and means a strong place. The word is 
Keltic, and gives name to several places in Ireland, 



OLD STREETS. 313 

including Dangan in Meath, the Duke of Wellington's 
birthplace. 

And now we turn into the High Street — long, 
level, narrowish, slightly bending, with many old 
gables and projecting windows ; the houses not lofty ; 
the general aspect rural and quiet. Up a narrow 
bye-way on the right is caught an exciting glimpse 
of a huge stone gateway covered with time-worn 
sculpture ; while in front, closing the street, stands 
the old West Gate of the city — a massive fortalice, 
through whose low-browed arch is seen the suburb of 
Saint Dunstan. Over the battlements rises to view 
a grovy hill, part of the sloping ridge that shelters 
the shallow vale of Canterbury on the west. 

The ' London, Chatham, and Dover ' brought us in 
behind time of course — about half an hour— and it 
was too late to get into the Cathedral; nevertheless, 
I hastened to that fine old gateway up Mercery Lane. 
At the left-hand corner of the lane was once a famous 
pilgrims' inn, in which, if you like, you can fancy 
Chaucer's company putting up. The Cathedral-yard 
is not a striking one. The south porch (the principal 
one in all Saxon-English churches) is finely propor- 
tioned ; but, ah me, how the restaurateur has been at 
work ! What raw and coarse recutting of the sculp- 
ture work ! What mean little new statues ! In good 
sculpture, I know things the size of half an orange 
as grand in their sort as the Parthenon. 

More of these statues are swarming in the lower 



314 AT CANTERBURY. 

niches of the west towers — f b y Phyffers,' says 
Murray. f And who is the sculptor Phyffers ?' I 
asked a virger ( f rod-carrier/ — the spelling adopted 
here being perhaps the etymological Dean Alford's 
doing). ( I don't know, sir, more than he lives in the 
Walworth Road, London, and whoever subscribes 
251. can have a statue put up.' Not, I suppose, one 
to himself. 

Surely, statues ought not to be cheap ? They ought 
to represent somebody worth recollecting. Now-a-days 
they are springing up, little and big, like mushrooms, 
or rather toad-stools. However, these statues are 
dear — dear at the money. 

Among the latest of Phyffers' performances are 
Erasmus and Dean Alford, side by side. Erasmus's 
claim to stand here in cheap stone is in kind no better 
than I may myself boast of by-and-by. He made a 
ramble to the Cathedral about 350 years ago, and 
wrote some account of it in his e Colloquia Familiaria,' 
under the title, f Peregrinatio Peligionis ergo.' 
Ogygius, devout believer in holy things, describes to 
his friend Menedemus three pilgrimages he has made 
— one to Saint James of Compostella, who gives his 
devotees a scallop-shell, e because he has plenty of 
them from the neighbouring sea,' and who of late has 
had fewer visitors i by reason of this new opinion that 
is spreading abroad in the world ;' another pilgrimage 
to the shrine of Saint Mary at Walsingham, where he 
saw, among other relics, a vial of the Blessed Virgin's 



ERASMUS. 315 

milk. After this, Ogygius went to Canterbury, ' one 
of the most religious pilgrimages in the world.' 
( There are two monasteries in it,' he says, c almost 
contiguous, and both of Benedictines, Saint Augus- 
tine's being the elder. But the church sacred to the 
divine Thomas — divo Thomce — lifts itself to heaven 
with such majesty that even from a distance it strikes 
the gazers with religious awe. With its splendour it 
dims the neighbouring lights, and throws into obscurity 
that anciently thrice-renowned place of Saint Augus- 
tine. There are two great towers, saluting from 
afar all comers, and sounding with a wondrous boom 
of brazen bells through all the neighbouring regions 
far and wide.' 

This passage seems to describe the Cathedral before 
the great central tower, that beautiful model of the 
perpendicular style, was raised above the roof, or at 
least before it was finished. Professor Willis and 
others date this erection 1495 ; but the original 
authorities cited only say that it was raised by Prior 
Goldstone II. and two other ecclesiastics. Groldstone 
became prior in 1495, but this does not prove the 
tower to have been raised in that year, and indeed it 
could scarcely have been one year's work. Now 
Erasmus came to England in 1497, and then began 
his personal acquaintance with John Colet; (see 
Colet's letter, dated Oxford in f Eras. Op. Omn. Lugd. 
Bat.' 1703, Epist. XL) This Colet, afterwards 
famous Dean of St. Paul's and founder of the school, 



316 AT CANTERBURY. 

was the very Gratianus Pullus, or Gratian Dark, who 
visited Canterbury along with Erasmus ; each being 
then — if I am right as to the time — about 30 years of 
age. 

That Gratianus is Colet is beyond question. 
Witness Erasmus himself, who in his ' Modus Orandi 
Deurn ' speaks again of the relics shown at Canterbury, 
adding, f To John Colet, who was with me, these 
things gave much offence ; but I thought it best to 
endure them till an opportunity should come to amend 
them quietly.' And elsewhere he says of Colet, 
6 non nisi pullis vestibus utebatur, cum illic vulgo 
sacerdotes et theologi vestiuntur purpura ' — he wore 
nothing but black or dark robes, instead of the usual 
scarlet. 

But later in the Colloquy, Warham is named 
as Archbishop, whose rule began not till 1503. 
Probably Erasmus paid several or many visits to 
Canterbury during that wandering, poor-scholar life 
of his, and puts no exact description of its appearance 
at any particular date into the mouth of Ogygius in 
this ( Colloquium,' which was not completed till 1524 
(witness the date of Virgin Mary's letter quoted therein). 
But I think it likely that he first saw the Cathedral 
before the great central tower had lifted its beautiful 
lines of stone into the sunshine and rainclouds of Kent. 

Let us go on with the Colloquy, which I translate 
in abbreviated manner. Among many similar wants 
(discreditably many), English literature has no good 



OGYGIUS AND MEXEDEMUS. 317 

translation of any of the works of Erasmus. A trans- 
lated selection of the ' Epistolas/ well clone, with brief 
elucidations, would be valuable as well as amusing. 

tf In the south porch' (proceeds Ogygius) i stand 
three armed men sculptured in stone, who with their 
impious hands murdered the most holy man ; their 
names added, Tusci, Fusci, Berri,' [possibly meaning, 
it is guessed, Tracy, Fitz Urse, Brito.] 'Why this 
honour to such men ? ' (asks Menedemus.) e They have 
the same kind of honour done to them as is done to 
Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas ; and they are set there as a 
warning. For their crime drove them raging mad, and 
they recovered their senses only by the solicited favour 
of most holy Thomas.' ( O the perpetual clemency of 
martyrs ! ' ( When you enter, a certain spacious 
majesty unfolds itself; and to this part everyone has 
free access.' ( Is there nothing to be seen, then ? ' 
6 Only the massiveness of the fabric, and some books 
fastened to the pillars, the Gospel of Nicodemus among 
them [a spurious gospel : they ought to have known 
better, hints the satirist], and also a sepulchre of I 
know not whom. Iron gratings prevent ingress to the 
choir, but allow of a view of the whole extent of it. 
You mount to this by many steps, under which a kind 
of vault admits to the north side, where they show a 
little wooden altar sacred to the Blessed Virgin, only 
notable as a monument of antiquity condemning the 
luxury of these times. Here the pious man is said to 
have uttered his last farewell to the Virgin when death 



318 AT CANTERBURY. 

was imminent. On the altar is the point of a sword, 
wherewith was pierced the skull-top of that best prelate. 
We religiously kissed the sacred rust of the sword for 
love of the martyr. Thence we went to the crypt, 
which hath its mystagogues. And first we were shown 
the perforated skull of the martyr, covered with silver 
save the top of the cranium, which is left bare to be 
kissed. At the same is shown a leaden plate {lamina) 
with the name Thomce Acrensis insculpt upon it.' 
[ Corpus understood ? Such plates were placed inside 
coffins. It is not settled what Acrensis was meant to 
say; some think ' of Acre,' i.e., born there, and that 
his mother was a Saracen. One ingenious guesser sees 
in Acrensis the Latin equivalent of a Bee, of the beak, 
or point : a Beckett being diminutive.] f Here also 
hang up in darkness the hair-shirts, girdles, breeches, 
with which he used to subdue the flesh ; euough to 
make one shudder; and condemnatory truly of the 
softness and delicate living we now indulge in.' ' And 
the monks, too, perhaps.' ' That I will neither assert nor 
contradict ; 'tis no affair of mine.' i You say right.' 

£ We now returned to the choir, where various repo- 
sitories were opened, and O ! what a quantity of bones 
they brought forth — skulls, jaws, teeth, hands, fingers, 
whole arms — all of which, having first adored, we 
earnestly kissed. There would have been no end to 
it, I think, but for the indiscreet interruption made 
by one of my companions, an Englishman, by name 
Gratianus Pullus, and a man of learning and piety, 



RELICS. 319 

but not so well-affected toward this part of religion as 
I could wish.' i I opine he was a Wicliffite.' e I think 
not ; but he may have read his books. This gentleman, 
when an arm was brought forth with some bloody 
flesh still sticking to it [this seems incredible ! ] 
shuddered at the notion of kissing it, and showed his 
disgust in his countenance. Whereupon the mysta- 
gogue shut up all his things. After this we saw the 
altar and its ornaments, the wealth of which would 
beggar Midas and Crcesus ; and in the sacristy a 
wonderful pomp of silken vestments and golden candle- 
sticks. There also we saw the foot of divine Thomas, 
plated with silver ; and a coarse gown of silk, without 
ornament, and a handkerchief retaining marks of sweat 
and blood. These were shown by special favour, 
because I was somewhat acquainted with the most 
reverend Archbishop William Warham, and had from 
him three words of recommendation.' ( I have heard 
he was a man of singular humanity.' i He was humanity 
itself: of such learning, such sincerity of manner, and 
piety of life, that no gift of a perfect prelate was 
wanting in him.' 

i Behind the high altar we ascended as into another 
church, and here saw the whole face of the best of men 
set in gold with many gems. Here Gratian got entirely 
out of the good graces of our attendant by suggesting 
that Saint Thomas, in his lifetime so kind to the poor, 
would be better pleased to see all this wealth applied 
to charitable uses rather than in a vain show. The 



320 AT CANTERBURY. 

mystagogue frowned, pouted out his lips, and looked 
with the eyes of a Gorgon ; and I doubt not would 
have spat upon us and turned us out of the church, but 
that he knew we were recommended by the archbishop. 
I partly pacified him with gentle words, saying that 
Gratian spoke not seriously, but had a jesting way with 
him, and I also gave him a little money.' 

i I entirely approve your piety. Still it sometimes 
comes into my own mind that it is a very wrong thing 
to expend such vast sums in the building, adorning, and 
enriching of churches. I would have the sacred vest- 
ments and vessels of a proper dignity, and the structure of 
the edifice majestic ; but to what purpose so many fonts 
and candelabra and golden images ? Why this immense 
expense for organs, as they are called? Why this 
musical whinnying [musicus hinnitus — I fear Erasmus 
was not a lover of music], got up at such cost, when 
meanwhile our brothers and sisters, Christ's living 
temples, are pining with hunger and thirst ? ' To this 
Ogygius in reply agrees that moderation in these 
costlinesses is desirable, but thinks at the same time it 
is better for kings and great folks to spend their money 
on churches than in gambling or in war, and says he 
would rather of the two see a church luxurious than 
bare and mean. 

Then he goes on to tell how the Prior came, and 
showed them the shrine itself of the martyrs. They 
did not see the bones, which is not permitted, 
nor could it be done without a ladder ; but the outer 



THE SHRINE. 321 

wooden case being lifted up by pulleys, gave the inner 
shrine to view. 6 The basest material in it was gold. 
Every part beamed, glittered, and flashed with precious 
stones, the hugest and rarest, some of them bigger than 
a goose-egg. Some of the monks stood round in 
attitudes of the deepest veneration ; and when the 
cover was lifted, we all adored. The Prior touched 
with a white rod the jewels one by one, telling its name 
in French, the value, and the donor ; the chief ones 
being the sifts of monarchs. 

( Hence the Prior carried us back into a crypt, and 
showed us by candle-light a wonderfully rich altar of 
the Virgin, guarded with iron bars ; then again to the 
sacristy, where was brought out a box covered with 
black leather, and placed on the table ; it was opened, 
and all present fell on their knees and adored.' ( What 
was in it?' ' Torn pieces of linen, many' of them 
bearing marks of having been used to blow the nose 
with. Others, they told us, were used by the pious 
man to wipe the perspiration from his face and neck. 
Here again Gratian got out of favour. The Prior, 
knowing something of him as an Englishman of repu- 
tation and of no little authority, kindly offered to 
bestow upon him one of these bits of rag as a most 
valuable gift. But Gratian, far from being grateful, 
took it fastidiously on the point of one of his fingers, 
and laid it down, making a contemptuous movement 
of his lips, as though he said " Phew!" { I was both 
ashamed and alarmed by this ; but the Prior, who is 

Y 



322 AT CANTERBURY. 

no stupid man, pretended not to notice it, and after 
giving us a glass of wine, kindly dismissed us ; and we 
w r ent back to London.' 

This touch about the Prior is delicious, and his 
urbane omission to take notice contrasts well with the 
anger of the inferior exhibitor of relics. The whole 
account is very curious, especially considering the point 
of time to which it refers. Erasmus little thought 
there was a boy then in England whose breath would 
by-and-by scatter these relics to the four winds. Yet 
the world moves slowly. Here, in the year 1872, 
stands this great edifice, not on the terms on which 
some rare shell is preserved in a museum, but as though 
it were still the habitation of the deepest and dearest- 
thoughts of living England. Erasmus's prior of 300 
years ago is very like Emerson's bishop (see l English 
Traits'). — ' If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman 
and reads fatal interrogatories in his eyes, he has no 
resource but to take wine with him.' Have we got no 
further, after all the satirists and reformers ? Civility 
costs nothing, it is said — nothing, that is, to him that 
shows it ; but it often costs the world very dear. 

It is not likely that friend Desiderius could possibly 
have foreseen that his own statue would ever decorate 
a niche of the famous edifice in right of his having 
written (an odd claim surely !) the sub-sarcastic account 
of his visit to the Cathedral which Ave have just been 
reading. But in our day some one has given 25/., and 
there stands Erasmus (a small copy of the Rotterdam 



ST. MARTIN'S. 323 

statue) beside King Ethelbert and Dean Alford carved 
by Phidias of the Walworth Road. 

Is it possible that Patricius Walker may one day 
find an ecclesiastical pedestal somewhere ? One might 
take this Erasmus statue, if it meant anything, to have 
affinity to the Prior's glass of wine — one other example 
of how civil the Church is to everybody. But in truth 
it means nothing ; men have long since ceased to care 
about these things as questions of truth and error, right 
and wrong. The dilettantism of archaeology, and the 
more serious affairs hinted in the phrase i loaves and 
fishes,' are now the only two living interests connected 
with these old monuments. 

The raw statues and scraped south porch disheart- 
ened me ; the uniform west towers (one rebuilt) are 
just tolerable, rather pleasing, not beautiful, and the 
whole aspect of the Cathedral yard was disappointing. 
There was a cold sky too, and a chilly wind blowing, 
and I felt lonely and tired, and as if I had no business 
at Canterbury. Still there was enticement in the 
Norman transepts and towers of Andrew and Anselm, 
and the strange inbencling of the wall beyond. Out 
of the city I walked eastwards, under great trees, and 
mounted the hill to the little Church of Saint Martin, 
itself very old, and built, 'tis said, on the site, and 
partly on the walls, of an older church which stood 
here, already bearing St. Martin's name, when Augus- 
tine and his monks came to convert the pagan English; 

Y 2 



&24 AT CANTEBBtrRY. 

for the Keltic British were Christians, but their con- 
querors remained heathen. 

Ethelbert — or, if you like, JEthelberht — King of 
Kent, Saxon and pagan, married the Christian Bertha, 
daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, and for her and 
her attendant bishop was the little Christian chapel set 
on the slope of this hill near the capital of the kingdom 
of Kent, earliest permanent settlement of the Teutons 
in Britain. Ethelbert, moreover, as at this time i Bret- 
walda,' exercised a supremacy, not exactly definable, 
over the other kings. 

There are three good reasons why Augustine came 
first to Canterbury : Queen Bertha's Christianity, 
King Ethelbert's authority, and the nighness of the 
city to Butupia?, the usual landing-place of visitors to 
Britain. At Butupiae, now * Bichborough,' between 
Bamsgate and Sandwich, where the great fragments of 
Boman fortification still look forth from their low cliffs 
— but the sea has receded from them, and level green 
pastures now stretch below — at Butupiae Augustine 
and his monks landed, and sent a message to the king. 
He ordered them to stay where they were for the pre- 
sent, and that meanwhile they should be supplied with 
all necessaries. Some days after, the King came into 
Thanet, and received the missionaries in the open air, 
where he would be less subject to magical arts than in 
a house. After conference he said, 'You speak very 
fairly. I cannot forsake my old worship ; but you are 



, AUGUSTINE. . 325 

free to come to Canterbury, and teach whom you 
will. 5 1 

A thousand years later, by the bye, there was 
(rightly or wrongly) much less toleration in England 
for new teaching. 

So the monks from Rome travelled along the Roman 
road and reached this very hill, whence they looked 
down on the wooden and wicker city of the Cantuarii, 
with its earthworks of defence and palisades, in the 
broad vale among trees and thickets. It cannot be 
doubted that they stopped to worship at the little 
shrine of their faith ; then lifting a tall silver cross 
they formed into a procession, and, with choristers 
chanting a Gregorian litany, descended into Canter- 
bury, and were well received. 

This little Church of St. Martin was handed over to 
Augustine, and some of these very stones . and bricks 
(Roman bricks) that I touch may be part of the walls 
within which the first English king was baptized into 
Christianity, an event commonly spoken of as one of 
the most momentous in the history of the human race ; 
and perhaps it may be allowable so to speak of it 
Mighty temples (like this of Canterbury), establish- 
ments, Church-and-state conjunctions and rivalries, 
persecutions, wars, reformations and revolutions, creeds, 
books and art-works, civic and family arrangements, — 
all modes wherein human life, public and private, can 
manifest itself and send on its influences — have they 

1 Bede'§ Ecclesiastical History. 



326 AT CANTERBURY. 

not taken form and colour for a thousand years and 
more from that mystic sprinkling ? 

Missionaries have usually been the bearers not only 
of a theological creed, but of a superior civilisation and 
culture i and monasteries were long the refuges and 
nurseries of learning. These are facts which go far 
to account for success and authority ; but also make 
more difficult the question (to which the answer has 
never yet perhaps been fairly sought), how much and 
in what ways any creed, as such, has modified human 
life and manners. What, for example, were Ethel- 
bert's life and character like, whilst he was a 
pagan, and what afterwards ? The English in general, 
from a.d. 500 to 1000, what were they as heathens, 
and what as Christians, say in the matters of truth, 
courage, humanity, purity, wise and happy life ? 
Certainly the new rules had no effect of making men 
leave off fighting ; that continued to be the main busi- 
ness of their lives ; and, indeed, promises of success in 
battle and extension of territory were among the usual 
bribes (in addition to eternal salvation) employed to 
persuade men of note to be converted. The monkish 
chroniclers often record instances where these promises 
were fulfilled ; but, after all, the pagan Jutes and 
Saxons and Angles beat the Christian British. The 
pagan Danes afterwards beat the Christian Saxons, 
who by that time had fallen as a people into a very 
weak and confused state. In short, the word i Chris- 
tianity,' as commonly and loosely used, is one of those 



HAWTHORN BUDS. 327 

vague and misleading terms for each of which it would 
be beneficial to substitute at least three or four of a 
more definite sort, to be used on their proper occasions. 
The very first thing that ought to be aimed at in lan- 
guage, and usually the very last thing aimed at, is 
definite expression of definite meaning. But since the 
latter is too often missing in waiters and speakers, they 
can scarcely be expected to strive for the former. 

After peeping in through the windows of this thrice- 
famous little Church of Saint Martin, I mounted the 
hill behind, through a market-garden, and found atop 
a hawthorn in bloom — my first this year. With what 
a delicious soothing flowed the well-remembered frag- 
rance over my sense ! One has nothing to quarrel 
with in these lovely joys of nature. c I love this haw- 
thorn-bush,' I exclaimed aloud, ' twenty times more 
than Canterbury Cathedral, with all its pillars and 
arches, in every style of Gothic ! ' and, picking one 
pearly tuft, went over to the windmill, and stood 
awhile under its lee ; now looking up with awe at one 
great sail after another swashing down like a Titan's 
sword, now looking forth on the prospect of green 
sloping corn-fields, with here and there a grove, and 
amid a shallow vale the simple city, with its one 
dominant edifice, three-towered, in the midst. 

It was Saturday night, and I walked about the 
streets by gas-light, presenting them older and more 
picturesque than garish day ; but the Cathedral yard 



328 AT CANTERBURY. 

was locked up, which did vex me. I remembered 
York last year, and that great pile by moonlight, and 
how I stood on the west steps and climbed with mine 
eyes into the stars by the ladder of those vast towers. 

But the west gate of Canterbury is satisfactory, 
is mighty and massive. In the wider street outside are 
a good many old wood-fronted houses ; one of which 
was formerly an inn, where pilgrims arriving after the 
gates were closed used to put up for the night, I 
enjoyed the little old-fashioned shops, with their low 
ceilings and miscellaneous jumble of articles, and often 
paused at a window or door to watch the friendly 
greetings and gossipings of vendor and customer, &6 
characteristic of a country town not too large for every- 
body to know nearly everybody else. Countryfolk, 
their marketings finished, got deliberately into their 
carts and drove away. I saw no tipsy person, or night 
prowler, or any sign of disorder, all along the main 
thoroughfare, from the tall dark foMage of Saint 
George's Place to where the street of St. Dunstaii 
melted into the darkness and solitude of a country road,, 
with a white horse grazing on its hedge-side grass. 

The last house at this end of the city stood alone, 
ancient and decayed, at its gable a dead tree seen 
weirdlike against the broken night-sky. It looked like 
a house with a history ; at least, like every old house, 
it has the scene of many histories under its uneven roof, 
and behind its lead-latticed windows ; not of people 
and events who are ' historic ' in the usual sense (for 



A NIGHT WALK. 329 

this is but a small house, and never was a rich one), 
bat of simple human beings, of infancy and maturity, 
old age and death. Many a child of the house must 
have played round that withered tree when it, too, was 
green and gay, and gone to sleep under those battered 
tiles in a garret more full of wonders than all the 
palaces and temples of the outside world. Could one 
but have the record — the real inner record — of the life 
of one of those unknown and for-ever-forgotten chil- 
dren, I would not give it for the best extant history of 
Saint Thomas a Becket, and of Saint Augustine to 
boot — two personages for whom, taking the reports 
of their admirers, I confess to feeling but little regard. 
Wending northwards, I came into the neighbourhood 
of the barracks, and then first on some token of noc- 
turnal revelry. From the 6 Duke's Arms ' and the 
' British Grenadier ' issued sounds of rude chorusing, 
in one case with some attempt at ' singing a second.' 
What a good little thing, I thought for the thousandth 
time, if part-singing Avere universally taught in schools, 
so that whenever two or more singers met, they might 
have a repertory of kindly song-music at their com- 
mand. Elsewhere in the same street was the notice, 
'A Free and Easy every night. Miss Aclelina Villi ers, 
lady dancer; Mr. Brown, pianist ; singing.' In the 
dim road a few belated soldiers were making for their 
quarters ; and presently the- patrol came round the 
corner and marched past with a slow swing. At the 
barrack-gate paced the sentry with his gun;, while 



330 AT CANTERBURY. 

inside lay quietly, each on his own pallet, hundreds of 
strong men, of coarse unruly natures many of them, 
ready to start up, one and all, at the bugle's sound to- 
morrow morning, and ' fall in,' each to his allotted 
place. The most wonderful of machines is an army, 
composed of that complicated and variable material, 
human nature ; yet acting at its best with a powerful 
concert and regularity as of the heavenly spheres 
themselves. Might not men be trained to act with 
equal order and combination to peaceful ends ? Un- 
doubtedly. Let us manage that little business of 
part- singing to begin with ; and go on to the organisa- 
tion of labour. 

Next day was Sunday, and I went to morning ser- 
vice in the Cathedral, heard the living river of choral 
harmony, heard the Athanasian Creed, and a sermon, or 
rather the noise of it, like the cawing of a rook, for 
the words slipped through my mind unheeded. In the 
quarto Prayer-Book on the ledge before me was a 
book-plate of old device, showing enclosed in scrollwork 
a cross with X at the centre, and written underneath, 
( Christ Church, Canterbury.' On one side of the 
cross in this book some profane pencil had drawn (most 
likely at sermon-time) a grotesque face or mask. The 
nave and choir looked almost as new and fresh as though 
Pugin had built them yesterday; and one half-expected 
to see here and there a warning of ' Wet paint.' It 
was only by turning to certain corners and details that 
the eyes assured themselves they were gazing on a 



INSIDE THE CATHEDRAL. 331 

thrice- venerable building. Seen from where I sat, 
the uniformity of the newly cleaned pillars and groin- 
ings of the nave, and the uniformity of the panellings 
of the choir, along with the execrable modern stained- 
glass, made the general effect disappointing. There 
was a kind of dismal tidiness and smartness ; no grand 
gloom anywhere. Even the oblique glimpses of the 
transepts (usually effective in cathedrals) were uncom- 
fortable, showing, as it were, a jumbled museum of 
various kinds of arches. 

I learned next day that most of the modern glass 
is the doing of a private gentleman of Canterbury, 
solicitor by profession, who having, first, a turn 
(such as it is) for designing painted windows, se- 
condly, money to spare, thirdly, ambition to dis- 
tinguish himself, and, fourthly, interest with the 
Cathedral authorities, has filled, not one or two, but 
perhaps a dozen or more of the great windows with his 
handiwork. Let me offer my contribution to his fame 
by copying the inscription, * George Austin, dedicavitj 
and add the remark of a verger on the subject : c Well, 
sir, there they are, and we can't take 'em away, you 
see ; and the boys won't break 'em.' 

I wished to ascend the great tower, but was told it 
was inaccessible to visitors, the stairs being out of 
repair. Most part of the crypt, also, is in a very dis- 
orderly condition. 

Leaving closer examination for the morrow (which I 
duly accomplished: but vide Professor Willis, Dean 



832 AT CANTERBURY. 

Stanley, and many others), I went forth or a country 
walk, and was lucky in my course. Mounting by St. 
Thomas's Hill, a slope of the gentle ridge that shuts 
in Canterbury vale on the west, I took a field-path to 
the left. Zephyrus came over the flowery meads, and 
every breath carried conscious health and sweetness 
into the blood. 

The path led me to the edge of a steep little dell, 
into which it sloped. On the right hand was a thick 
grove not yet in full leaf; on the left stood, some fields 
off, a little church: in the hollow, among orchards, peeped 
the brown roofs of an old hamlet, and thither I gladly 
descended ; nor was my pleasure lessened to find that 
this hamlet was Harbledown, formerly Herbaldown, the 
very place — at least I doubt it not — which Chaucer calls 
i Bob-up-and-down, under the Blea' (now the Blean, 
still a wild tract of half- forest land), and certainly where 
Erasmus was stopped to kiss Saint Thomas's old shoe. 

f Having set forth for London,' says Ogygius, i we 
came, not far from Canterbury, to a place where the 
road descended, steep and narrow, into a hollow, 
hemmed in with banks on either side, so that there 
is no escape : you cannot take any other way. Here 
on the left hand is a little almshouse of old men. 
When they spy a horseman coming, one of them runs 
out, sprinkles the traveller with holy water, and then 
offers him the upper part of a shoe bound round with 
brass, in which is set a bit of glass by way of a gem. 
After kissing this, you give a small piece of money.' 



HARBLEDOWN. 333 

' Well,' says Menedemus, ' I'd rather meet a set of old 
almsmen in such a place than a gang of sturdy robbers.' 
( Gratian,' continues Ogygius, i rode on my left, next 
to the little almshouse. He bore the sprinkling pretty 
well, but when the shoe was held out, he asked what 
was that? "Saint Thomas's shoe," says the man. 
Upon which Gratian got angry, and turning to me 
exclaimed, " What do these animals \_pecudes~\ want? 
would they have us kiss all good people's shoes ? They 
might as well ask us to kiss their spittle, and so forth !" 
I pitied the old man, who was looking doleful at this, 
and consoled him with a little money.' Menedemus, 
( In my opinion Gratian was not wholly unreasonable 
in being wroth. If such shoes or slippers be preserved, 
as proofs of the wearer's frugality, I don't object ; but 
it seems to me a piece of impudence to thrust these 
things upon everybody to be kissed. If anyone liked 
of his own free will to kiss them out of a vehement 
impulse of piety, I should hold that pardonable enough,' 
Ogygius. e 'Twere better these practices were given 
up, I confess ; but from things which cannot suddenly 
be amended, it is my habit to extract what good I can 
find, if any good there be.' A sentence very cha- 
racteristic of friend Erasmus. 

And here is the very place — the hollow of two 
hills and the narrow way between steep banks where 
Erasmus and Colet rode by ; and here is the almshouse 
or hospital of Saint Nicholas, the very same chari- 
table institution that harboured the old man who ran 



334 AT CANTERBURY. 

forth with his holy shoe, for the Reformation spared 
little Herbaldown Hospital. It is rebuilt as to its 
walls, and now stands in the form of a small group 
of trim red dwellings, wherein nine old brethren and 
seven old sisters abide. 

In the first letter to John Colet in the collection 
(Epis. xli.) dated Oxford, 1498, Erasmus gives an 
interesting sketch of his own character, which has 
probably full as great a share of truth as is usual in 
such confessions. From this letter, along with Colet's 
previous one (Epis. xi.) already alluded to, I infer, 
contrary to the statements of biographers, that they 
had no personal intercourse until this visit of Erasmus 
to England. After much compliment and depreca- 
tion of Colet's too high estimation of him, Erasmus 
says, e I will describe myself to you, and better than 
any other can, since no other knows me so well. You 
shall find in me a man of little fortune, nay, none at 
all ; averse from ambition ; most ready to affection ; 
but slightly skilled, it is true, in literature, yet a most 
flagrant admirer of it ; who religiously venerates 
another's goodness, though he has none of his own ; 
who easily yields to all in matters of doctrine, to 
none in matters of faith ; simple, open, free ; well- 
nigh ignorant of simulation and dissimulation ; pusil- 
lanimous, yet honest ; sparing of speech ; and in fine 
one from whom you must expect nothing but his soul 
\finimurri\.' > 

Climbing the steep bank on the south side of the 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 335 

hollow way at Harbledown, I came to an old weedy 
churchyard with a little very old church with square 
tower and Norman door. The low side-wall is crum- 
bling, the old high-pitched roof seems almost ready to 
fall in. As usual, everything has been let go to the 
verge of destruction for the want of a stone here, a 
tile there, till at the last moment shall step in the 
restorers (a clergyman most likely the ringleader) to 
make a grand job of it. Some such thing, I gathered, 
is about to happen to this little gray church also. 

Mounting the hill westward, and catching sight, as 
the pilgrims used to do at this point, of the great 
cathedral, at the same moment a rich gurgle of song 
broke from a thicket close at hand — a nightingale ! 
My first this year, and the song lifted me again to 
poetry and Chaucer. 

— Every true gentle hearte free, 

That with him [Love] is, or thinketh for to be, 

Against May now shall have some stirriDg, 

Or to joye, or else to some mourning: 

In no season so much, as thinketh me. 

For when they may hear the birds sing, 

And see the flowers and the leaves spring, 

That bringeth into heart's remembrance 

A manner ease, medled [mingled] with grievance, 

And lustie thoughts full of great longing. 

As I lay awake (says Chaucer) the other night, I 
thought of the saying, that it was of good omen for 
lovers to hear the nightingale sing before the cuckoo ; 
and anon I thought, as it was day, I would go some 
where to try if I might hear a nightingale ; for I had 



336 AT CANTERBURY. 

heard none that year, and it was the third night of 
May. So as I espied the daylight, I would no longer 
stay in bed, but boldly went forth alone to a wood that 
was fast by, and held the v^ay down by a brook-side, 
till I came to a land of white and green, the fairest I 
ever saw. The ground was green, and powdered with 
daisies ; the flowers and the grass of the same height, 
— all green and white, and nothing else to be seen. 
There I sat down among the fair flowers, and saw the 
birds trip out of their bowers, where they had rested 
all night; and they were so joyous of the daylight, 
they began at once to do honour to May, singing with 
many voices, and in various songs. They pruned them, 
and danced, and leaped on the spray, and were all two 
and two in pairs as they had chosen each other on 
Saint Valentine's Day. And the river whereby I sat 
made such a noise as it ran, accordant with the birds' 
harmony, methought it was the best melody that 
might be heard of any man.' 

For very delight he fell into a half-slumber, not 
all asleep, not fully waking, and in this he heard a 
cuckoo sing, which vexed him, and made him say to 
the bird, i Sorrow on thee ! full little joy have I of thy 

cry!' 

And as I with the cuckoo thus 'gan chide 
I heard, in the next bush beside, 
A nightingale so lustely sing, 
That her clere voice she made ring 
Through all the greene wood wide. 

Then followed a dispute between the birds, the 



NA T URE'S BALM. 337 

nightingale praising love, and the cuckoo disparaging 
the same, till at last the former cried out bitterly, 
* Alas ! my heart will break, to hear this lewd bird 
speak thus of Love, and his worshipful service.' Then 
(says Chaucer), methought I started up and ran to the 
brook, and got a stone and flung it heartily at the 
cuckoo, who for dread flew away; and glad was I 
when he was gone. For this service the nightingale 
thanked the Poet, saying, 

One avow to lore make I now, 

That all this May I will thy singer be ;. 

and promising that next May he should hear her song 
first, and meanwhile must believe no whit of the 
cuckoo's slanders against love. Nothing (replies 
Chaucer) shall bring me to that ; — and yet love hath 
done me much woe. 

' Yea ? Use,' quoth she, ' this medicine, 

Every day this May or thou dine, — 

Go -look upon the fresh daisie, 

And, though thou he for wo at point to die, 

That shall full greatly lessen thee of thy pine. 

And look alway that thou he good and true, 
And I will sing one of my songes new, 
For love of thee, as loud as I may cry.' 
And then she began this song full high, 
' I shrew all them that be of love untrue ! ' 

and so she flew away. 

Chaucer's hearty and untiring delight in grass and 
daisies and birds' songs,' and his sincere belief, which 
he preserved into old age, in the curative balm for 
anxious thoughts which is given to men in these simple 

z 



338 AT CANTERBURY. 

joys, is one of those things for which we dearly lore 
the old poet. His very heart and soul are soothed by 
a pleasant grove, a green field, a chimp of wild 
flowers. And so did these vernal sights and sounds 
and odours soothe me that day as they soothed old 
Geoffrey ^.yq centuries ago. 

' The Flower and the Leaf,' by the bye, is certainly 
not Chaucer's (say the experts), but later, and most 
likely by a woman. In that case, the name and memory 
of a great English poetess, able to write of these 
things as well as Chaucer himself, lie buried among the 
dark centuries. She too, whilst yet her eyes could 
see daylight, rejoiced greatly in the 

branches broad, laden with leaves new, 

That springen out against the sunny sheen, 
Some very red, and some a glad light green — 

of early spring, and the rich fields 6 covered with corn 
and grass,' and the fragrance of flowers. 

— Suddenly I felt so sweet an air 

Of the eglatere, that certainly 

There is no heart, I deem, in such despair, 

Nor with thoughts froward and contraire 

So overlaid, but it should soon have bote [relief], 

If it had once felte this savour sote [sweet]. 

By this time I had come back into the city, and here 
my meditations took another turn. Close to the railway 
station is a grass-field, and in a corner of it two or three 
children were gathering handfuls of buttercups. ( Is 
this the field where the people were burnt ? ' s Yes, 
sir/ says a little maid of four years, dropping a curtsey. 



THE 31 ART YES 1 FIELD. 339 

6 And where did they burn them ? ' ( Down there, 
please, sir,' pointing to a grassy, weedy hollow. This, 
then, is the Martyrs' Field. 

In the year 1556, on March 2, Cranmer was burnt 
alive at Oxford, in front of Balliol College ; and the 
same day Queen Mary made Cardinal Pole Archbishop 
of Canterbury in his room. Under his primacy about 
2000 Protestants, men and women, were burnt alive ; 
eighteen of them in this hollow, within siolit of the 
great Christ Church and the monastery of the first 
English saint; such being the practical result of a 
thousand years of ( Christianity.' No shrine covers the 
ashes of these tf martyrs ; ' only the spires of grass 
spring above them ; only the indiscriminate rain falls 
upon the scene of their torture. Yet, if voluntary 
acceptance for conscience' sake of the worst extremities 
of suffering constitutes martyrdom, some of these poor 
men and women — long since at peace — are better 
entitled to it than Thomas a, Becket, slain in a wrangle 
with fierce knights of his own creed, on motives political 
and personal ; or Alphage (whose church is here, close 
to the Palace), carried off a prisoner by the heathen 
Danes when they sacked Canterbury in 1011, and after 
seven months' captivity, slain by the stroke of an axe. 
Alas ! how men torment each other and themselves. 
Is human life in its own nature too long and too happy ? 

The sun shown out gaily, and the children went on 
gathering king-cups ; and a white butterfly came 

z 2 



340 AT CANTERBURY. 

wandering into the Dell of Agony, and poised for a 
moment on a tall stem of grass. 

Another walk, that kindly afternoon, led me to the 
( Dane John,' where were many folk in Sunday clothes 
enjoying, according to their several measure, the grass 
and trees, and the prospect from the battlements. 
Then I found the Old Castle, a shapeless mass of 
pebbled wall. To one corner telegraph wires are 
fastened, and the fortress is now a gas factory. Behind 
it lurks the little old church of St. Mildred with a quiet 
avenue of lindens. Thence by bye-streets, such as set 
one meditating on life in a country town, both to-day and 
in its past generations, for everywhere is the suggestion 
of peaceful continuity, I slipt into a field-path, among 
young corn and hop-poles, and so came round by Long 
Port to a quaint little space named ' Lady Wotton's 
Green,' and facing upon it the great old gate, older 
than Chaucer's time, of Saint Augustine's Monastery. 

Looking from the shade of a linden on the mullioned 
window of the room above the gateway, I thought of it 
now as the marriage-chamber of a happy bridegroom 
and bride, he five-and-twenty, she not sixteen ; he an 
Englishman, tall, slender, handsome, dignified, full of 
chivalrous courtesy and grave tenderness ; she French, 
girlish, vivacious, spirituelle, with clear brown com- 
plexion and soft black eyes, a sparkling brunette, now 
timid in a foreign land and new condition ; he a king, 
just come into his ancient heritage, she the daughter 



THE YOUNG QUEEN. 341 

of many kings. How gay was the old gateway with 
flags and flowers as the young royal pair drove through, 
coming from Dover to sup and sleep here ! 

Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Henry 
the Fourth of France, married by proxy in Notre 
Dame, May 21, 1625, to King Charles of England, 
was detained a month by weather and else, during 
which time the King waited much at Dover for his 
bride ; but he was at Canterbury when she landed, on 
Sunday evening, about eight o'clock, June 23 (N.S.). 
Next morning about ten came the King to Dover 
Castle, when his sweetheart was at breakfast. Hearing 
of his arrival, she hurried down, and would have knelt, 
but ' he wrapped her in his arms with many kisses.* 
The trembling little bride began a set speech — ' Sire, 
je suis venue dans ce paysj &c, but broke down in a 
burst of weeping. The courteous tenderness of her 
bridegroom soon reassured her ; and when, finding her 
taller than he had expected, he glanced towards her 
feet, she showed her shoes with a smile, saying, e Sir, I 
stand upon my own feet ; I have no helps by art ; ' 
and they drove off together to Canterbury. e The 
same night, having supped at Canterbury, her Majesty 
went to bed, and some time after his Majesty followed 
her ; but having entered her bedchamber, he bolted all 
the doors with his own hand. . . , The next 
morning he lay till seven o'clock, and was very pleasant 
with the lords that he had beguiled them, and hath ever 



342 AT CANTERBURY. 

since been very jocund.' l The lords in waiting had 
planned, doubtless, not to exempt even Majesty from 
some of the old-fashioned epithalamic ceremonies. 

Next morning at breakfast the young couple ( f Mary' 
is the name he calls her by), looking out through that 
large window, see before them in the June morning 
sky this same great tower, with its attendant pinnacles. 
The little Queen is unfortunately a ( Papist,' which 
may make some trouble by-and-by, when the priests 
and politicians get to work, but hardly in present 
circumstances. They say something, it is likely, of the 
past history of the city and the kingdom. Over the 
future history of England, over their own future, hangs 
for them a thick, impenetrable veil. 

From Canterbury the happy young pair travelled to 
Rochester, the next day to Gravesend, and in the 
State barge they entered the capital, — the river banks, 
in spite of a heavy shower of rain, lined with loyal 
and applausive multitudes ; and landed at Wliitehall. 
Happy, thrice happy, young King and Queen! 

Thence I passed to North Gate Street, and the 
Hospital of Saint John (founded under Lanfranc, 1070- 
1089), i twin-hospital of Herbaldown.' Through an 
old arched gateway, mostly of wood, I passed into a 
quiet quadrangle (rebuilt) with tall trees behind and a 
space of little garden-Jots where the inmates cultivate 
their patches of peas and lettuce, mixed with many gay 

1 Contemporary Letters, given in Court and Times of Charles I. 
London, 1848. 



THE RIVER. 343 

flowers and fragrant potherbs. Below this a meadow 
gently slopes to the winding Stour. 

Coming back to the street I walked northwards to the 
barracks, and there a side way led me to the river's brink 
beside a great mill, and a path that followed the watery 
windings by many a great old pollard- willow. Swallows 
skimmed the slow-flowing stream; on the other bank were 
little orchards and sleepy red houses, and for landmark 
rose ever the long roof and tall towers of the cathedral. 
This predominance in visible form of a supernatural 
idea gives (even yet) the suggestion of a reverent unity 
pervading the life and thought of those who dwell 
within the compass of its immediate presence. Nor is 
there much in Canterbury to disturb this impression. 
Barrack and railway have intruded themselves, but the 
old city is not swallowed up in the results of modern 
6 industry and prosperity.' 

I returned by the Abbot's Mill, with its dam and 
rushing weir, fronted by a grass-field in which stand 
four mighty trees of the poplar kind, mountains of 
shivering leaves. Higher up, tanneries pollute the 
stream, and the cows' hoofs, for glue, hang up in ugly 
rows. In benighted pagan times a river was held 
sacred. Still, recollecting what the Medlock is like 
where it crawls with its inky load of foulness by Man- 
chester Cathedral, one may be almost thankful for the 
Stour's condition. 

I had walked a good many hours, but the calm star- 
light night drew me forth again, and approaching the 



344 AT CANTERBVRY. 

dim bulk of the West Gate, I heard a nio-htWale 
sincnn^ on the left. 

There might you hear her kindle her soft voice. 

Finding a path to the river, where it flowed down 
through the fields and into a shrubbery just before 
entering the city, I stood close to the unseen singer, 
sometimes whistling to him, and answered, I chose to 
think, with a louder and more triumphant strain. 

' She, 9 our old poets always said, following the Greeks 
and Latins, and it was natural to make feminine this 
airy charm of sound ; but we cannot now afford to 
disregard so broad a natural truth as that the male 
birds of every kind are always the chief and often the 
only singers. A poetic statement and a scientific 
statement are essentially different ; yet they must both 
be statements of truth ; and as scientific truths pass 
more and more into general apprehension, these, in 
place of old mistakes, will form the natural and proper 
vehicles and illustrations of poetry. 

At midnight, through my open bedroom-window, 
came the distant song of the tireless bird, and I thought 
again of Chaucer. With eagerness and faith can I 
listen to bird or poet ; not to bishop, or dean, dead or 
living. As to those old saints, their unscrupulous piety 
seems to have been capable of any lie — one might 
almost say of any crime ; and, with all their good 
intentions and self-denying labours, they left a terrible 
legacy to mankind, of which we also (Prince Bismarck 
included) are heirs. 



GOOD NIGHT! 345 

But all this is growing dreadfully wearisome, at our 
time of day. Better look at antique edifices and 
establishments with the mere eyes of an archaeologist 
or an American tourist. The Americans enjoy English 
cathedrals so much that I believe they would keep 
them up by subscription if necessary. If they were 
in the market, Mr., Barnum would very likely buy 
Canterbury and York, to number the stones and set 
them up in Central Park and Boston Common, and 
perhaps make a handsome bid for the respective arch- 
bishops, cleans, vicars-choral, and virgers. 

I had better go to bed. 

Chant on, dear bird, God's chorister, 

and do thy might 
The whole service to sing 'longing to May. 

Ah, Chaucer, where now art thou, this new May 
night ? If one could learn that, 'twere worth a pil- 
grimage. Good night ! 



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